


SG-7 in Welcome to the Lake

by MrProphet



Series: Stargate SG-7 - Season 1 [6]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 22:39:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10751250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	SG-7 in Welcome to the Lake

_SGC Gamma Site, P8H-112_

Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Ferretti took a deep breath of the clean, cool Shayaran air and sighed, happily. "Will you look at that," he said as his team followed him. "How often can we walk through that Gate and meet people we know are on our side."

"I don't think we should overstate the case, Sir," Alexa Rasputin cautioned. "From talking to Captain Sokalov on SG-4 I understand that relations at the International Research Institute are somewhat strained."

"The United Nations in miniature?" Merlyn suggested.

"Not quite," Roberts corrected. "Apparently, the divisions here are more interdisciplinary than international; French and American physicists ganging up on their fellow countrymen in biochemistry."

"Too many projects, not enough funding," Sergeant Pearson agreed.

Ferretti smiled, especially pleased to hear Alexa involving herself in the team's casual banter again. After her encounter with Lord Nor on P26-1A7, the Russian had grown even more skittish and withdrawn than she had been before. He sincerely hoped that this mission would prove relaxing for all of them, but particularly for Alexa Rasputin; God knew she needed a chance to unwind. While a Code Enoch – the codename for a possible Elder Threat presence detected in an SGC facility – was not to be taken lightly, it was not even close to the level of danger SG-7 had become accustomed to. If there was to have been trouble on the scale of cleansing a Scourge temple or running down a pack of Deep Ones, the Gamma Site would have looked a lot less peaceful.

"Colonel Ferretti."

Ferretti turned to face the leader of the sentries who stood watch at the Stargate. Curved bulwarks provided them with protection while they covered the event horizon. The eight soldiers, each wearing the slate grey fatigues of the International Extraterrestrial Research and Expeditionary Group, were armed with a mixture of L85 rifles and L86 support weapons; machine guns mounted on the bulwarks gave additional firepower. The rifle section wore the usual national patches on their sleeves, in this case bearing the massed crosses of the Union Jack.

"That's right..." Ferretti paused for a moment before venturing: "Sergeant?"

"Regimental Sergeant Major Huw Davis," the man replied. "1st Battalion, Welsh Guards. We've been expecting you, Colonel; Colonel Hendry will be sending his ADC, Lieutenant Keller, to meet you at the jetty and conduct you to the INSP laboratory."

"Thank you, RSM," Ferretti said, respectfully. "Alright, people; let's not keep the lady waiting."

SG-7 left the Gate site and made the short walk down to the side of the enormous lake which formed the centrepiece of the Gamma Site. Fashioned from local blackstone, the buildings which clustered the lakeside looked more like temples than labs and barracks. The unique and awe-inspiring form of the Black Tower rose from the waters, a fortress carved entirely from the black, volcanic stone of a colossal monolith. The great stronghold of the long-dead Shay cast its dark shadow across the waters of the lake and the platform of the hydro-lab, dwarfing all that the people of Earth had built in the past few years.

"This place is quite extraordinary, isn't it," Merlyn mused. "Just a year ago, the Gamma site was a collection of prefab huts; now look at it."

"It's certainly impressive," Roberts agreed. "Expensive though. I can't help wondering if the money wouldn't be better spent on the projects themselves, rather than the buildings."

"Shuluri," Pearson said.

"Are you alright," Roberts asked.

"The Shuluri," Pearson explained. "The self-styled Stonesingers of Cappadocia; P7D-813 in our parlance. Master stonemasons and they enjoy it as well; after centuries as a specialist caste in the empire of Camulus, they see working stone as an honour, rather than a chore. When we explained that we wanted a set of buildings with modern functionality, constructed in the style of a long-dead culture, we had to barter like demons just to get them to accept a minimum wage. In the end, we settled for paying them peanuts and showering them with gifts and dental care bennies."

"Apparently they held a grand, architectural tournament to see who got the job," Merlyn added.

The original jetty – a short platform intended only to receive the automated boats which shuttled between the shore and the tower – had been greatly enlarged so that the supply boats for the operations centre and the laboratory platform could load and unload quickly. A small passenger launch stood off the jetty and a young woman with short, blonde hair stood waiting beside it.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Ferretti," the young woman said, saluting smartly. "It's a pleasure to see you again."

"Likewise, Lieutenant Keller. I don't believe you've met my team. Captain Lloyd – Merlyn – Lieutenants Roberts and Rasputin and Sergeant Pearson."

Lieutenant Keller inclined her head in acknowledgement and exchanged the requisite salutes with the team. "Ma'am, Lieutenants, Sergeant. Welcome to Lake Kawalsky."

 

Lieutenant Anne Keller wore her heart on her sleeve, alongside the maple leaf which signified her nationality. She was a young and inexperienced officer and a die-hard idealist, trained as a diplomatic liaison. The Canadian's specialist work in the fields of international and interservice cooperation made her assignment to the Gamma Site a given after the research base was opened up to the IEREG.

"I assume you've been briefed on the situation, Sir?" Keller asked.

"Just the basics," Ferretti replied. "Some sort of problem with the hyperdrive research programme with a possible connection to the Elder Threat."

"The INSP lab has been quarantined under the terms of the Behemoth protocols," Keller explained. "The _Munin_ has been grounded and her crew confined pending your investigation; Major Romanov has established a security perimeter, just in case an infected party tries to make a break for it."

"Romanov?" Alexa asked, worried.

"Major Theodoric Romanov; Russian Army and head of security at the Lake. Do you know him?"

Alexa shook his head. "It's a family thing. We're not the Campbells and the MacDonalds, but generally speaking, Romanovs and Rasputins don't mix."

"That whole fall of the Empire thing still stings, huh?" Roberts asked.

Alexa laughed. "Oh, the stories my papa would tell. To hear him, Grigori Efimovich was the white sheep of the family. Of course, he also told me that he was descended from Genghis Kahn on his mother's side."

Ferretti gave a small cough, although once more he was reluctant to bring Alexa back to earth, especially in this lull while the launch shortcut the forty-six miles walk along the shore to the spaceflight complex. "Are there many 'infected parties'?" he asked Keller.

"None confirmed," Keller assured him. "We're in precautionary mode at the moment."

"What I don't understand," Roberts admitted, "is quite _why_ there's a hyperdrive programme here. I thought we'd built a working hyperdrive."

"Well, working is a generous description of the Prometheus' main engines," Ferretti admitted.

"I'm sure that Group Captain Ives can answer your questions," Keller assured them. "She's the head of the INSP."

"How is it that an RAF officer is leading the naquadah stardrive program?" Merlyn wondered. "Surely the Groom Lake technicians have been studying naquadah much longer than anyone else has even known that it existed?"

"True," Keller agreed. "But the Group Captain's work on spatial warping fields with Thera – the British Theoretical Research Agency – was groundbreaking, even if it was purely hypothetical. And the International Naquadah Stardrive Program is focused on the _drive_ construction; the naquadah itself is really the work of the power generation project."

"Who heads that?" Roberts asked.

"Dr Wa Xiaohua of Beijing University," Keller replied.

Ferretti shook his head. "People claimed opening Gate research up to other nations was a security risk," he sighed. "Turns out it's just embarrassing."

"If it's any consolation, the US still leads the main flight research programme and the anthropological exploration of the planet; all Canada has is admin and the motor pool," Keller assured him with a smile.

"See," Ferretti said. "We're not even the top gearheads anymore."

Keller laughed. "Well, you're going to be interviewing the members of the Program, they're from eleven nationalities, six universities, three private research foundations and eight military services."

"Must make for some fun conversations," Alexa said.

"Another reason for putting Group Captain Ives in charge," Keller admitted. "She speaks several languages and can communicate with most of the Program members in their native tongue; except the Australians," she added with a chuckle, but at once her face darkened. "And Dr Gupta, but..."

"Veerindra Gupta?" Merlyn asked. "The woman who was killed."

Keller nodded. "The navigator of the _Munin._ The woman who was murdered," she corrected.

"Murdered!" Ferretti murmured, aghast. "The mission briefing didn't say anything about _murder_. We're a research and expeditionary unit, not the Office of Special Investigations."

"We know that," Keller assured him. "The murder itself will be dealt with through the proper channels, once the Behemoth threat has been resolved. It's a pretty open and shut case, though; Dr Lund isn't denying that he did it."

Ferretti frowned. "And Dr Lund is?"

Keller gave a bitter laugh. "Dr Mathew Lund; the one who went mad and killed Dr Gupta. Would you believe, the mission psychologist?"

*

On the dock beside the massive, prefabricated bulk of the International Naquadah Stardrive Program laboratories – a permanent, blackstone replacement was in the process of being constructed – Lieutenant Keller handed SG-7 over to their host for the coming investigation. Group Captain Ives was not what Ferretti had been expecting. He had envisaged the British officer as either a strapping, ebullient, horse-and-hounds Amazon in an immaculate uniform or a nervous, mousy technical type in a lab coat. Instead, he found himself facing a woman equal to his own five-foot-nine, with her greying brown hair knotted tightly at the back of her neck. She wore her Research Group fatigues as casually as any officer at the SGC and her brown eyes showed a blend of confidence, concern and no-nonsense efficiency; her face wore a frown but looked more used to smiling.

"Ma'am," Ferretti said, with a polite salute. His team mirrored the gesture; she might not be a field officer, but as a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force, Amanda Ives ranked equal to a full-bird colonel.

"Lieutenant-Colonel," she returned. "Thank you Lieutenant Keller; I'll take it from here."

"Ma'am." Keller saluted again and returned to the boat.

"At ease," Ives told SG-7; her voice was warm with the traces of a country drawl still apparent behind the clipped, officer's-mess accent. "As the lieutenant has probably explained we're a pretty mixed bag over here: different services, different nationalities; military and civilian. To avoid complications we run an informal show and work essentially to a research hierarchy; I hope that won't make you feel at all uncomfortable. I expect you've come across the difficulties inherent in issuing orders to civilian consultants in your work with the SGC?" She led the team over to a small train which ran from the dock to the buildings and they climbed aboard.

"Oh yeah," Ferretti agreed, ruefully.

"They're all good people here, though," Ives added. "They can be a little surly if you treat them like crewmen but they're taking the quarantine in good spirits. I suppose I can be grateful for once that none of them have much of a social life. We've kept the extent of the problems from most of the researchers for the time being; only myself, Colonel Hendry, Dr Michaels and the crew of the _Munin_ know all of the details."

"That includes us," Ferretti assured her. "The briefing was...brief. Maybe we can start with a little background and go on from there."

Ives nodded her head. "Well, as you are probably aware the naquadria hyperdrive is now deemed to have been a failure, albeit a brilliant one. The _Prometheus_ is currently powered by an Asgard hyperdrive, but we can't rely on getting more of those. The only known supply of naquadria is located on the planet Langara and a large proportion of the primary deposit was lost or destroyed in last year's quakes and subterranean detonations. In an attempt to find a way of producing sufficient power from the more stable and abundant isotope, the naquadah research lab was created. You may know us by our less-than-flattering sobriquet?"

"The Knackers' Yard," Pearson said.

"That's the one. Anyway, when the International Research Group was permitted access to the Gamma Site the lab was expanded and subdivided. The original project head, Captain Taylor, now heads up the High-Energy Weapons unit sharing space with the Countermeasures Research Initiative in the bunker; that huge concrete blister over there. We call those two Hue and Cry."

"So you _do_ have some decent acronyms on this base?" Roberts asked.

"We try, Lieutenant," Ives replied, patiently. "The main building houses Dr Wa's reactor group and of course the Stardrive team. In essence, our mandate is to bring the energy requirements of hyperspace travel down while Dr Wa ramps the available power _up_.

"As I'm sure you know, the _Prometheus'_ original hyperdrive was only around seventy-eight-percent efficient."

"I can't say I did," Ferretti admitted. "Is that bad then?"

"It was one of the most efficient propulsion systems ever devised by humanity," Ives replied, "but such Goa'uld built engines as have been studied operate at a minimum of ninety-seven percent and the mopping properties of naquadah actually allow for efficiencies well in excess of one-hundred percent."

"Mopping?" Roberts asked.

"Another of our neater acronyms," Ives explained. "Em-oh-pee: Short for 'mockery of physics', as in what naquadah makes. Even surrounded by Earth-tech, the Asgard hyperdrive functions at one-eighty-three, which means that the drive energy output is almost twice the input. Anyway, we've been applying various theoretical approaches to practical experiments aboard the _Munin_ for the last six months or so."

"And the _Munin_ is?" Ferretti asked.

Ives touched the controls of the train and it slid off onto a side rail. "The hangar is on the way to the main lab; I'll show you."

 

Roberts gave a low whistle as the team entered the hangar. "Now that is a great looking ship," he said. "I mean, all respect to the _Prometheus_ , but... _that_ is a great looking ship."

"I'm glad you like her," Ives assured him. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the X-311; known to her close, personal friends as the _Munin_."

The X-311 was only a little larger than a teltac. Her fifty-metre hull was shaped like a knife blade, with short pylons on either side to support the hyperdrive modules. The entire surface of the vessel was charcoal grey and smooth as silk.

"What's she made of?" Pearson asked.

"The usual stuff," Ives replied. "Trinium-steel structural supports, adamantium struts in the engine pylons; the hull plates are made of an alloy of iron, trinium and naquadah that provides excellent energy dispersal."

"She sounds almost combat-ready," Roberts noted.

Ives shrugged. "If she had some weapons she might be, but this is just a test ship. The materials are chosen for structural strength and hyperdynamics."

"Hyperdynamics?" Ferretti asked.

"With the Prometheus we learned that, at sufficient velocities, even in hyperspace there's something to be said for smooth lines. That's why the main hull is coated with a layer of bonded polycarbide; a high-strength polymer developed by Thera in the seventies, but which we've never had the available energy to manufacture until now. The bonding process results in an incredibly smooth surface and even at hyperspace velocities the substance is resistant to routine heat and impact damage.

"Unfortunately," Ives added with a sigh, "magnificent though she is, the _Munin_ is also the source of all our problems."

Alexa tutted. "Women, eh."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Ferretti said. "How do you mean, Ma'am?"

"The _Munin_ returned from her first long-range hyperflight voyage eight days ago, with a crew of four. Since then, two members of the crew have been complaining of recurrent nightmares and even waking visions of strange, tentacled beings."

"And the other two?" Merlyn asked.

"One of them is in the infirmary under heavy guard," Ives explained. "He seems to be having nightmares as well, he just never talks about it. The fourth member of the crew was Vera; Dr Gupta."

"I have to ask, Ma'am," Merlyn apologised, "but Dr Gupta was killed two days ago now? Do you know if she was experiencing the nightmares before then?"

Ives paused for a moment, then nodded. "She didn't say anything either; she didn't tend to talk much to anyone. Everyone else on base has at least one person they share a native tongue with but she was the only Gujarati speaker here; I think it made her feel isolated and self-conscious. Yes, she looked tired and drawn, just like the others, but if she confided in anyone it would have been Dr Lund."

"Perhaps we should get on with this investigation then," Ferretti suggested. "I don't suppose anyone wants this left unsettled for long."

"I should say not," Ives agreed. "I've arranged for you to use my office to interview the crew. Will you be wanting to look over the ship."

Ferretti nodded. "Rasputin and Pearson, that's you."

"I'll assign one of the ground crew to show them around," Ives promised.

"I guess someone should review the mission logs for the flight. Merlyn and Roberts; I think you'll be best to interview the crew, so I'll do the reading and you can all crib from me in the exam."

"I can help you with the logs," Ives said. "I've gone over them so many times I probably recite them in my sleep. As we are offworld, standard protocol is that you all go armed, but there's no need to tote those P90s everywhere; you can secure them in the armoury. Lieutenant Rasputin, Sergeant; the keys to the _Munin_ – her access codes and code transponders – are also kept in the armoury. Captain, Lieutenant Roberts; we can drop you in my office on the way to the control room."

*

Merlyn decided that they should begin by skimming the personnel files for the members of the _Munin_ 's flight crew. She split the pile and passed two of the files to Roberts; Roberts read fast, she read faster. Once they were done they swapped, then reviewed.

"Captain Jake Mollett, USAF," Merlyn began. "Commander and mission pilot of the _Munin_ on this and on three short-range hyperspace flights as well as numerous sublight tests of the vessel's spaceworthiness. Past exploits include two shuttle missions, one as commander."

Roberts nodded. "He was the space specialist," said. "The others were technicians, but he knew all the difficulties of operating in vacuum and in zero-G as well, in case of system failures or if there was any need for EVA. If everyone else ever folded under the pressure, they were certain he'd hold up."

Merlyn gave a rueful frown. "And did he, do you think?"

"Difficult to say," Roberts replied. "He's the one who put a bullet in Dr Lund, which could be a sign either of losing it or of staying with it, depending on the exact circumstances."

"That was on the ground, right?" Merlyn asked. "The file doesn't say."

"I believe so," Roberts agreed. "I think that discharging firearms inside spaceships would definitely go down as _not_ keeping it together."

"Alright," Merlyn said. "The _Munin_ 's number two then. Stable, would you say?"

"Not my field," Roberts assured her. "Dr Melissa Sterling, particle physicist; Cambridge University DAMTP, followed by spells at CERN and the European Space Programme. Brilliant theoretician and practical enough to get assigned as the _Munin_ 's reactor engineer and second-in-command. She was the liaison to the reactor group as well as the principle designer of the X-311's engine room. She and Captain Mollett had put forward a request for permission to cohabit on the base."

"The Captain and engineer of a spaceship?" Merlyn asked, doubtfully. She opened one of the files and examined the form. "It was granted?" she asked in astonishment. "Surely that can't be normal, even for the RAF."

"Nothing much at the Lake is normal," Roberts replied, with a shrug, "but from what I understand, the place is run half as a military compound and half as a university. Fraternisation regulations got stuck half way: You can do it, you're just supposed to ask first."

Merlyn nodded her understanding. "And you of course are well acquainted with the Lake's fraternisation regulations?"

"I like to check these things in advance; just in case."

"Of course. Anything else of note?"

Roberts shrugged. "Dr Sterling has released several popularly successful books on subatomic physics and superstring theory – whatever the hell that is – and she's got nice legs," he offered.

"Lieutenant Roberts, you're becoming predictable," Merlyn warned him.

"Really? Suppose I should have seen it coming."

Merlyn chose to ignore Roberts and continued: "Then there was Dr Veerindra Gupta, the mission navigator." She looked back at the list of Dr Gupta's qualifications, although she could call the entire list into her impeccably ordered thoughts at will. "Who was brilliant," she summed up. "Barely thirty years old; two PhDs – astrophysics and mathematics – an expert in a dozen disciplines."

"And not just scientific," Roberts pointed out.

"No," Merlyn agreed. "What is Kalari Payat anyway?"

"An Indian martial art," Roberts replied. "Dr Gupta might have been five-foot-six and barely over a hundred pounds, but she was in superb shape and she knew how to handle herself. Dr Mathew Lund on the other hand..."

"Six-two, one hundred and sixty pounds, keen sportsman...but no fighter."

"Yet he was apparently able to overcome Dr Gupta. Weirder and weirder," Roberts mused.

"Their stories are all pretty similar," Merlyn noted. "I've looked over the post-mission psychiatric reports. Although only Mollett and Sterling complained of _recurring_ nightmares, they all seem to have reported, quite independently, dreams of strange, tentacled beings moving through space."

Roberts frowned. "That in itself seems pretty odd."

"How do you mean?" Merlyn asked.

"Well, the fact that these beings don't seem to _do_ anything in the nightmares. Nightmares of squid monsters trying to suck your face off I can understand, but just 'moving through space'? It's as though..." Roberts tailed off, searching for a way to put a feeling into words.

"As though their mere _existence_ were what was frightening," Merlyn agreed. "Well, that certainly matches with recorded instances of Elder-influenced dreams. Alright," she sighed. "Send Captain Mollett in, Roberts. I'll talk to him while you interview Dr Sterling."

Roberts shivered, dramatically. "I love it when you take charge," he teased.

Merlyn shot him a patient frown. "Oh shut up, Roberts."

"Yes, Ma'am," Roberts grinned. "Just trying to be less predictable."

Merlyn shook her head, despairingly. "And you can't _possibly_ know what Sterling's legs are like because the only picture in her file is a head shot."

*

"Lieutenant!" Pearson called.

"Yes, Sergeant?"

"Do you want to keep an eye out for some kind of...devastating space squirrel?"

Alexa walked back and stuck her head into the engine room. "I beg your pardon," she said. "Is that some complicated engineering term I'm not familiar with?"

"No." Pearson withdrew from the engine housing. "It's just that this engine looks rather like a devastating space squirrel may have made a nest in it."

"And you couldn't just say 'this engine is a mess'?" Alexa asked.

"A mess? Oh, no, it's _brilliant_! just a little...confusing." He pointed through the access hatch. "The relay arrangement in the hyperspatial warping manifold is simply phenomenal and..."

"Sergeant," Alexa interrupted. "Imagine I know nothing about hyperspatial warping manifolds."

Pearson smiled. "Well, the team have made significant breakthroughs in all areas of the engine's design, _without_ resorting to the use of components that have to be ordered from the Asgard. The only problem with this configuration is that the power requirements for the hyperdrives must be so vast that, even with the reactor running at maximum efficiency, forming the entry and exit events and conducting the ship safely through the intervening subspace areas would completely deplete the engine capacitors. You'd have to lay over to recharge for well over a day before you could power up the engines again to come home."

"Four people stuck in that tiny cabin for a day?" Alexa asked.

"On minimum power: no manoeuvring engines, no long range sensors, no hot food and minimal air con."

Alexa whistled. "No wonder they all went barking," she said. "I'll leave you to finish up in here; I want to go and have a look at the...Actually, I don't much _want_ to look at Dr Gupta's body, but I should. I suppose after that I really ought to go over to speak with Dr Lund."

"I'm sure the Colonel doesn't expect you to do that; not alone, anyway," Pearson assured her.

Alexa gave a bitter laugh. "You of all people should know, Sergeant Pearson, that I am always alone."

*

"It's the problem which dogs this entire program," Ives explained to Ferretti as they entered her cluttered office. "The HIIK factor."

Ferretti frowned. "High-ick? You mean it's messy?" he guessed.

"H.I.I.K. 'Hell if I know'," Ives explained. "It's what we call the area of doubt that surrounds the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial devices. Our safety and testing procedures are stringent, but we're never quite sure if we've covered every angle."

"They can't be that stringent then; can they?" Ferretti asked.

Ives gave a weary sigh. "It's always possible that any device may have an effect which our equipment simply isn't designed to detect," she said. "How could we know? Marie and Pierre Curie both died of symptoms we now associate with radiation exposure, but the idea that the materials they were working with were giving off deadly invisible rays was madness to them. Naquadah does similar things to our understanding of conservation of energy and subspace makes most of the work humans have ever done on thermodynamic entropy..." She looked up at Ferretti. "The science talk is pretty dull for you, isn't it Colonel?" she apologised.

"Not at all," Ferretti assured her, unconvincingly.

Ives raised her eyebrow in an expression of doubt.

"Right. So what do you do?" Ferretti asked, concerned. "If you don't know what's going to happen...?"

Ives shrugged. "We take a calculated risk. As I say, the procedures are stringent; we do everything in our power to eliminate the risks, but the unknown dogs us. The decision was made a long way back that it was worth taking that risk," she added. "We don't throw our people in at the deep end on a whim."

Ferretti nodded his understanding. "So what's the ick here?"

"Engine emissions. It's just possible that one of our modifications is causing the engines to emit radiation of an unknown and undetectable form on a psychogenic frequency. It's unlikely though," Ives added. "It might account for strange dreams, but probably not _shared_ dreams." Ives indicated a stack of data DVDs from her desk. "These are the logs," she explained.

Ferretti gave a low whistle. "That's a lot of logs," he noted. "Your reports must be a hell of a size."

"The _Munin_ is a test vessel," Ives explained. "Everything is recorded and analysed, and I do mean everything; or at least everything we know how to measure. The raw data rarely gets into the reports; just the results of the preliminary number crunching. The quantity of data we've collected in the course of the project is actually so vast, and the dimensionality of the information so great, that the project computer scientists have had to develop new algorithms to deal with it efficiently." She ran through the discs one at a time: "Sensors; engine telemetry; internal monitors; life-support; personal logs; navigation data. There are _nine_ discs just taken up with hyperspatial current measurements. We've been through everything of course; we even checked the supply manifest, to see how much food they ate and what kinds. We checked all the wrappers and residue for contaminants," she added.

"Nothing?"

"Not a sausage," Ives confirmed. "The telemetry recorders and sensors probably won't be very revealing to you – certainly no more than for us – but you might make something of the personal logs. Perhaps we should start with the internal monitors, though. Everything that happens in the cabin during the flight is recorded."

Ferretti nodded. "How many discs is that?" he asked, with some trepidation.

"Just three," Ives replied. "I've queued them up already. I'm afraid there _is_ over thirty hours of material."

Ferretti sighed. "Got coffee?" he asked.

*

Captain Jake Mollett was only forty years old, but his hair was almost pure white. He had strong, angular features and big, soulful brown eyes, but those eyes were ringed with dark shadows and his handsome face was drawn and pale.

"Captain Mollett," Merlyn began. "I'm Captain Lloyd."

Mollett nodded his understanding, then he shook his head. "You're the SGC's specialists? I don't understand how anyone can claim any sort of specialisation in what happened to us. Even the GC and her team describe themselves as 'talented amateurs'."

"Suffice to say, our expertise is not in space travel," Merlyn replied.

"Well, I've met more psychologists in the last three days than in the rest of my life," Mollett said, "so you can't be nightmare specialists."

"We are less concerned with nightmares than we are with...You might say, the _causes_ of nightmares," Merlyn explained, enigmatically.

 

"So you're the men in black then?" Dr Melissa Sterling asked. "Well, _man_ in black, anyway."

Dr Sterling was of an age with her mission commander, but looked a little younger. Her grey eyes were haunted, and as shadowed as Jake Mollett's, but the face that was framed by her honey-blonde hair still held a wan beauty. She was wearing standard-issue fatigues, so it was difficult for Roberts to say whether he had been right about her legs or not, but she and Mollett would undoubtedly have made a handsome couple.

 "We're Air Force, Ma'am," Roberts replied, po-faced. "We wear blue."

Sterling flashed him a smile, clearly grateful for his humour. "Alright," she said. "Where do we start?"

 

"Why don't you get us started," Merlyn suggested. "I've read your report of the experimental hyperflight, but I'm interested in _anything_ unusual that may have happened during the mission; including anything that might have seemed too trivial to mention in the official record."

Mollett paused, thoughtfully. "You know that it was our first long-range flight using the experimental engine?" he asked, rhetorically. "The crew had all travelled in hyperspace before; in addition to the short-range tests on the _Munin_ , we had undertaken eight training flights in one of the old Shayaran bats and God only knows how many simulations. Then..." The fearless Air Force test pilot blanched slightly at the cold condemnation in Merlyn's eyes. "Is there a problem, Captain Lloyd?" he asked, with exaggerated brashness, clearly uncomfortable.

"I would appreciate it if you could avoid blaspheming, Captain Mollett," Merlyn whispered.

Mollett nodded his understanding. "I'm sorry, Captain," he said, sincerely.

Merlyn mirrored the nod. "Thank you, Captain. Now, you mentioned the Shayaran 'bats'? What are those?"

"You don't know?" Mollett asked. "Well, we've have managed to recover quite a lot of Shayaran technology from the ongoing planetary survey, including three short-range cruisers which were still spaceworthy. The flight lab are leading the research on the cruiser systems, but they always keep one of them flight-ready for us to use as a training vessel. We also took a long-range jaunt in the _Prometheus_ when they made the first test of the Asgard hyperdrives, but we were just passengers then. The three systems are very different," he noted. "The Asgard drives are incredibly smooth; the bats are real boneshakers. The _Munin_ is somewhere in between," he concluded, his voice affectionate and proprietorial as he spoke of the test ship.

"She must have handled well enough on the short-range flights, though?"

"She was a little bumpy through the windows," Mollett admitted, "but smooth as silk once we got her into subspace. You understand how hyperflight works, I presume?"

"Not in any great detail," Merlyn admitted.

Mollett chuckled. "Well, I'll explain as best I can, but Mel – Dr Sterling, that is – is really the one to ask about the physics."

 

"The basic principle is this," Sterling explained. "If you attempt to travel faster than light, and _if_ you have the resources to make that any more than a pipe dream, relativity – or rather, the underlying laws of the universe of which relativity is just the tip of the iceberg that we understand at our current level – smacks you with the Xeno effect, as I call it."

Roberts looked at the engineer, quizzically. "As in Xeno's Paradox?" he asked. "The rabbit and the hound?"

"Or the tortoise and the arrow; or the jet fighter and the biplane," Sterling replied. "I had no idea you were so educated."

"I get that a lot. It's the vacuous charm of my disarming smile."

Sterling managed a ghost of a smile. "Well, whatever the model, the maths is the same: by halving the time interval at each measurement, Xeno created a false paradox in which it appeared that – contrary to practical observation – an arrow would never strike a tortoise that was moving away from it. At relativistic velocities, however, the paradox applies in fact. You can't reach the speed of light because as you approach it, time relative to you slows down; in your local time you might cross the galaxy in a heartbeat, if you had enough energy available, but as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, you have been travelling for so long that the galaxy itself would be beyond recognition. Right?"

"Right," Roberts agreed. "This much I understand."

"Alright, so there are two ways to get around this problem, assuming that you don't have a handy wormhole linking the two points in space that you want to travel between; one is nigh impossible, the other merely improbable; both require a pretty ungodly level of power, but less than you would expend accelerating a ship to even point-five of light speed using any system of conventional thrust. The nigh impossible alternative is to use incredibly powerful thrusters and a time machine; the time machine counters the relativistic temporal deceleration."

"And the merely improbable one is hyperdrive," Roberts surmised.

"That is correct," Sterling said. "The mathematical calculations alone are mind-boggling; you have to think in five or six dimensions and apply that thinking to all of your standard energy equations, along with three unknown sources of entropy and one of rentropy – a sort of counter-entropic force that only applies outside of normal space-time. Once you work it out, however, you can create a short-lived gateway into hyperspace, a slightly different level of existence where relativity does not apply and where either all distance is shortened or all velocities increased or all time slowed down; no one is really sure, or at least no one we know."

"I thought that time slowing down was the problem," Roberts interjected.

"Only _subjective_ time," Sterling explained. "If your subjective time slows, you only think you're going faster; but if the _objective_ time across hyperspace were slower than that in our universe, yet somehow linked to it, we could travel the same distance faster. Velocity is distance travelled over time taken; less time, more velocity."

"My head hurts," Roberts announced.

"It's not so hard," Sterling assured him with a sympathetic smile. "Any child with multiple degrees in theoretical astrophysics could understand it. Actually; working with this technology, I sometimes feel like a child myself.

"Anyway, the _Munin_ uses the most advanced generators ever constructed by modern humankind, coupled with a bank of naquadah capacitors, capable of storing the vast amounts of energy needed to create a hyperspace window. Unfortunately, even with those capacitors, the field effectors which form the entry/exit event have to operate very close to the minimum power levels needed to sustain a stable window, which means that the transition from normal to hyperspace is rather choppy. Once we're in, it's plain sailing; at least until we have to come back to normal space again."

"So," Roberts said, "there's no chop during the flight itself?"

 

Mollett frowned. "Well, not normally," he admitted, "but on the long range test there was a bit of a twitch; about halfway through the flight. I didn't think much of it at the time."

"Was that outbound or inbound?" Merlyn asked.

"Both, actually," Mollett admitted. "Vera is..." he stopped and his face fell. "I mean, Vera _was_ analysing the interference. Before she...died." He shook his head. "Before she was killed, I mean." He closed his eyes and fell silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "I'm sorry; it's still...It was a shock. You expect to lose people in combat, but not here; not on the base and not like that."

"I understand," Merlyn assured him, gravely.

Mollett gave a grateful nod, but his eyes betrayed surprise. Clearly, he had taken Merlyn for an academic or technical specialist of some kind, rather than a field officer, well acquainted with death.

"Well," he went on, "Vera was working on the navigational logs and the hyperspatial current recordings, looking for something that would explain the shear; the GC looked over her results and she didn't appear to have found anything but..." Mollett shrugged, helplessly. "Hyperspatial dynamics combines a dozen disciplines in ways that no-one fully understands yet. Vera was the best we had, probably the best there is; without her, there's certainly no-one in the group who can analyse that data properly."

"We're taking care of that," Merlyn hedged, although early inquiries had indeed suggested that finding a replacement for Dr Gupta would be well nigh impossible. In a few months, she had left the Groom Lake scientists who built the Prometheus behind, outstripping them in the field of hyperspatial physics as rapidly as Major Samantha Carter had done with wormhole theory. "Now, aside from that 'twitch', there was nothing unusual about the hyperspace flight itself?"

 

"There _was_ something else," Sterling recalled, "something that we only picked up when we checked on the recorders. The outbound flight time was off by three-point-two minutes. As you travel in hyperspace, the only way to know where you are in terms of real space is to know exactly how long you're travelling. For that reason the travel time is set as part of the primary navigational calculations; the computer knows when to drop us out of hyperspace because we programme it _based on time_. There is no way that the time should have been out by that much."

"Out of curiosity," Roberts said," how far out of your way would that extra three minutes put you?"

"At the _Munin_ 's hypervelocity, not much more than fifteen light years, but we could have wound up _anywhere_ , including inside a solid rock. At the moment our sensors aren't at Asgard standard, so we have to aim for deep space on any long haul flight, then precisely target any shorter jumps."

"You got home alright, though," Roberts noted.

Sterling nodded. "Vera revised her navigational calculations based on the difference and factored in an extra three-point-two minutes hyperflight time." She frowned. "The only thing is, we were in hyperspace for a further one-point-nine minutes on the return journey, yet we were almost spot on our target point."

"What do you think caused the discrepancy?" Roberts asked.

"Decay rate," Sterling replied at once. "The _Munin_ 's computers are synchronised by a central atomic clock."

"Beryllium?"

"Naquadah," Sterling said. "We discovered almost by accident that the decay rate of naquadah is unaffected by relativistic distortion; that iceberg again. Somewhere along the line, however, the naquadah in the reactor core and the clock picked up a contaminant."

"What sort of contaminant?" Roberts asked.

Sterling shrugged helplessly.

 

"Mel analysed the clock after we got back," Mollett explained. "She found that the naquadah was contaminated. On a hunch she checked the reactor and identified the same contaminants there. She was just beginning an investigation into the source of the contamination – we were concerned about the possibility of sabotage – when..." He paused, then started anew.

"I'm no scientist," he admitted, "but I was doing what I could to help Mel out. Mathew was in the same boat, hovering around Vera's office, helping out as much as he could while she studied the navigation data and looked for some external explanation for the interruption."

"External?"

"Our twitch. There was some concern that the contaminant might prove to be a previously unknown isotope, formed by the interaction of the naquadah with the energy field of the hyperspatial disturbance."

Merlyn nodded her understanding, but said nothing.

"Mel was deep into a spectrographic analysis of the contaminant, so I wandered over to the nav lab to see if Vera had made any progress. I opened the door and..." He stopped again and closed his eyes for a moment. "I couldn't believe what I saw," he said. "For...I don't know how long, I just stood there and stared. Vera and Matt were kneeling on the floor, facing each other; he had his hands on her shoulders, I thought; then I realised they were around her throat; squeezing. His eyes...He was crying; weeping like a baby.

"He looked up at me and he _smiled_ ; just this sad little smile. And he said: 'I'm sorry, Jake. It had to be done.'" Mollett fell silent.

"And then what happened?" Merlyn prompted, when Mollett had not spoke for almost a minute.

"I drew my sidearm," Mollett replied, in a flat voice. "I told him to let her go, but he just kept on smiling at me. I told him again and I said I'd shoot. He held on, I fired; put the pullet right through his collar, just left of his throat. It's sheer fluke really that I didn't hit anything vital. It made him let go, though; just not soon enough."

"Dr Gupta was already dead?"

Mollett nodded, disconsolately.

 

"The medics told us that she must have been dead for several minutes before Jake arrived," Sterling explained, "but he still blames himself for not acting quicker. He's obsessed by what might have happened if he had walked faster, left my lab a little earlier; not stopped in the corridor to swap a few pleasantries."

Roberts nodded his head. "I understand," he assured her. "I know how it is. But I need to know what happened with you, not with Captain Mollett; Merlyn will cover that. Was there no sign at all that this was coming? Even something you only see looking back"

Sterling gave an emphatic shake of the head. "I was...I was utterly horrified," she admitted. "Matt could be a bit much, sometimes. He was big and boisterous, but was always so gentle with Vera."

Roberts' head turned a little on one side; it was an indication of curiosity, but Sterling sensed an expectant intensity in his pose that was a little disturbing. "They were close?" he asked, softly.

"As close as Jake and I," Sterling replied in a voice thick with conflicting emotions. "She wouldn't really open up to anyone but him; he was learning Gujarati so she could talk to him in her first language; he didn't need to, they both had perfect English, but..." She stopped and shook her head again. "I couldn't believe that he would hurt her."

"Maybe he didn't," Roberts sighed.

*

Alexa watched Dr Mathew Lund on the security monitor for several minutes before the guards entered his cell to bring him up to speak with her. He sat on his bench seat, head low, not moving a muscle in all the time that she watched him. He was without energy, utterly drained of all life and vitality; an empty husk that had once been a man. Alexa cold not help feeling pity for him, even though she knew him to be a murderer.

It took several minutes for the prisoner to be brought to the office which had been set aside for Alexa to use as an interrogation room. At the insistence of the security commander, Major Romanov, a pair of burly-looking sergeants were to remain in the room at all times, but Alexa had dismissed all other security; she had no fear of Dr Lund and she did not want him to feel intimidated. After her visit to the morgue, Alexa did not believe that Veerindra Gupta had died by violence.

The Gamma Site's CMO, Dr Barbara Michaels, had performed the autopsy of Dr Gupta's body and found no signs of a struggle. There was no trauma to indicate that she had been struck on the head or otherwise incapacitated, no tranquillisers of any kind in her blood chemistry, no needle marks and no secondary bruising. To all appearances, the _Munin_ 's navigator had simply stood passively while the mission psychologist strangled the life from her.

Dr Michaels seemed certain that there must be something that she had missed, but her findings so far matched precisely with Alexa's own convictions. From a brief vigil by the body, Alexa could sense none of the residual psychic disturbance of panic, fear or violence. To Alexa, the conclusion was inescapable: The woman who currently resided in locker 3b of the Gamma Site morgue had died at peace.

There was a knock on the door to announce the arrival of the escort. Alexa signalled for one of her bodyguards, a thickset senior sergeant with brooding eyes and a tattoo of an eagle on the back of his left hand, to open the door. His colleague, a junior sergeant, was smaller, but had a matching tattoo. Although they did not look as though they were related, both men were called Voshkov.

In person, Dr Lund should have been a commanding figure, but he had the same lifeless air that Alexa had observed on the monitors. It seemed to her that, rather than filling space in the room, Lund was a void; in his presence there was an emptiness more profound than that left by mere absence. His broad shoulders stooped forward, his hair was lank and his chin covered in a three-day stubble of soft, blond curls. Alexa did not think that he had slept since the death of Dr Gupta, save for the brief period that he had spent under anaesthetic, as Dr Michaels struggled to save his life, only to face trial and possible execution.

The escort sat Lund down opposite Alexa and fastened his right wrist to the chair with a pair of sturdy, hardened-steel handcuffs: SGC commands never used snapcuffs, since most known alien adversaries were able to snap the toughened plastic with little difficulty. They hesitated before leaving, the leader of the group casting a worried look at the fragile, elfin figure of Lieutenant Rasputin, but they obeyed their orders.

"Good morning, Dr Lund," Alexa began. "My name is Lieutenant Alexa Rasputin. I need to talk to you about the _Munin_ 's long-range test flight. Can you tell me anything about the flight that was not in the official report?"

Lund shook his head, slowly, but said nothing.

"You will answer the lieutenant's questions," the elder Sergeant Voshkov growled.

Lund turned his head slowly to face the big man. He remained silent.

"What about after the flight?" Alexa asked, calmly.

When there was still no response forthcoming, the younger Voshkov cracked his knuckles, menacingly. "If you want to be difficult, you may find us to be difficult as well," he said.

"Sergeants," Alexa said. Her voice was soft, but her tone carried an unmistakable warning. She was younger than Voshkov Junior and half the age of the senior sergeant and she knew from long experience of Russian Army NCOs that the two men would run roughshod over her if she gave them their head for a moment. In most circumstances, a pretty young lieutenant would have stood little chance against the two Voshkovs, but Alexa had defied gods and touched a primal darkness within herself that most human beings would have quailed from.

The Voshkovs were no exception. Without looking around, Alexa felt them blanche and they were silent, save only for the senior's mumbled: "Yes, Ma'am."

Dr Lund's response to her tone was quite different. He raised his head at once and stared at her in a mixture of awe and horror. "You...know," he whispered.

Alexa looked him in the eyes. "Yes," she said, at last. "Yes; I know. But tell me anyway."

"I had to do it," Lund murmured. "You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes I do."

"I couldn't leave her in this world to face the horror that is coming," Lund went on. "The only way for me to save her was to take her from the world. It was better that than leave her here to face...that."

"What about you?" Alexa asked. "She didn't intend for you to stay behind and face...that, did she?"

Lund gave a dry chuckle. "Unfortunately, Jake is a very good shot. I waited with my hands around my girlfriend's throat for someone to come and kill me, and then Jake arrived and put a bullet through my _shoulder_. Sharpshooting bastard."

"So it wasn't murder," Alexa said. "More...assisted suicide."

Lund nodded. "She wanted it as much as I did, but she couldn't bring herself...I told her not to worry; that I would join her straightaway." He turned his face away from Alexa's gaze. "I thought that I would certainly die but...I let her down."

Alexa shrugged. "Maybe you'll be a little late," she suggested, "but I doubt you'll have long to wait. Whatever your intentions, Dr Gupta's death did take place on a military base; there's every chance that you'll be shot."

"Unless they decide that I am mad," Lund replied. "But...can I, in good conscience, keep silent about the things that I have seen?"

"You are not the only one who has seen them," Alexa assured him.

Lund's eyes sharpened and Alexa felt a queasy twist of apprehension. She had allowed herself to sympathise too much with Lund because she understood his fears; she had forgotten the one thing which had impressed itself on her as soon as she set eyes on him: Although he was quite cogent, Dr Lund was also quite mad.

"You know," he whispered. "You understand. You should not have to face this, Lieutenant."

"Dr Lund..."

"I will set you free!" In an instant, the lethargy left Lund as he sprang to his feet, hurled himself over the table and lunged for Alexa. He had lost weight, but he was still large enough to knock over Alexa's chair and blast the wind from her lungs. He grasped at her throat and, failing to get a secure grip, he pressed the chain of his manacles across her windpipe. For a moment, Alexa genuinely feared that she was going to die, but the Sergeant Voshkovs were only wrong-footed for that moment. Lund was powerful in his rage, but Alexa's guards were strong and well-trained.

Choking and dazed, Alexa struggled to her feet. Her protectors had dragged Lund to the corner and now stood over him, slamming their heavy boots down upon him, over and over again.

"Stop," she gasped, her voice weak from shock and lack of breath. She thumped her chest to make her lungs work properly again. "Stop!" she ordered, and once more her voice carried a force that penetrated the dull rage of the two sergeants. "Get him to the infirmary," she went on, as the door opened to admit several of the escort officers.

"Lieutenant..."

"Then confine yourselves to barracks; you are relieved of duty." Alexa knew as well as the Voshkovs that Major Romanov was unlikely to uphold her suspension, but she was not about to let that dissuade her from taking every step to curb the brutality which was endemic in the 'grandfathers' – the old order of NCOs in the Russian Army, who considered an atavistic pecking order an acceptable substitute for professionalism.

From his place on the floor, Lund looked up. One eye was swollen closed, but the other glared at her in undisguised hatred. She could almost feel the weight of his anger at her actions and she knew that he could never possibly forgive her for saving his life.

*

_Much later_

Ferretti was beginning to get square eyes from staring at the screen. "Given that these are the logs of the crew on one of the most incredible voyages ever made by humankind, they really are _incredibly_ boring," he noted.

"Technical, perhaps," Ives replied, "but not boring."

"I stand by boring, Ma'am," Ferretti assured her.

"I must say, Ferretti...No," she admitted. "No, I can't deny it. They are very boring." Ives leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms up and back. "Ahh; I don't know about you, but I need more coffee."

"Yes, Ma'am," Ferretti responded at once.

Ives chuckled. "That wasn't an order, Ferretti. I'll get the coffee; you want one?

"Yes," Ferretti replied. "Yes, thank you, Ma'am."

"And call me Amanda, please."

"You're sure?"

"Well, Ives in front of the troops, but I can count the number of occasions on which I've been addressed as Group Captain on my fingers," she assured him. "I haven't gone by Mandy since I heard the Manilow song, but I'm an academic at heart; informality is my native tongue. Besides," she added, "if thirteen hours of watching these logs doesn't count as a bonding experience, I don't know what does."

"Not entirely useless though," Ferretti noted.

"No?"

Ferretti shook his head. "Well, at least I know that the nightmares started after the _outbound_ flight, not the return journey."

"You do?"

Ferretti pointed to the screen. The crew were sleeping, only Dr Gupta awake and on watch. The _Munin_ 's acceleration seats tilted back to form sleeping panels and the lights were dimmed, but the nearest sleeper – Dr Sterling – could be seen quite clearly. Ives studied the sleeping form, but discerned nothing to suggest any disturbance to her sleep.

"She looks peaceful enough," Ives said.

"Yes; she does, doesn't she," Ferretti agreed. "I can't say how, but I know that woman is having a nightmare. Maybe you just have to be around haunted people for a while to get to know the signs."

Ives looked concerned. "Haunted?"

"By nightmares," Ferretti said. "By...memories."

"Be... _around_ them?" Ives asked, tactfully.

Ferretti fixed his eyes on the screen as though the vital clue that had evaded them for hours were about to appear.

"I'll get the coffee," Ives said. She laid a gentle hand on Ferretti's shoulder as she rose; a touch that told him that she understood, perhaps better than he could have expected. It was scant comfort, given that neither of them could discuss their ghosts. Ferretti wondered if the Group Captain had team mates that she could talk to – as he did – or if everyone she could have spoken to was gone.

Ferretti turned back to the screens; Group Captain Ives was not his problem, the crew of the _Munin_ were. Dr Gupta was still at the monitor, making her status report; the rest of the crew were still asleep. Something was niggling at him, something that wasn't right, but it took him several more minutes to work out what it was.

Ferretti paused the playback, then searched through the pile of recordings. He slapped a disk into the second player and skipped to the relevant time signature. He was so intent on the monitors that he barely noticed Ives' return.

"You found something?"

"This is Dr Gupta's status report, logged at T-plus thirteen hours thirty minutes."

"Yes. We've watched it before," Ives reminded him. "Routine stuff."

"But look; that's the whole report and it's taken...seven minutes and eight seconds."

"Right."

Ferretti ran the main flight recorder back and let it play. "Alright; now this is the cabin recording from the same time. There's Dr Gupta making her report." He scanned forward about eight minutes.

"And?"

"And..."

Ives frowned. "What's she doing now?"

"Ah. That's the question, isn't it. She's recording something, but it's certainly not on the status logs. What else could she be recording to?"

Ives shrugged, helplessly. "There are no corresponding personal log entries. The only other recording that Dr Gupta has is the navigation logs, but that's just a data record."

"Are you sure?" Ferretti asked.

"I was," Ives replied. She set down two mugs of coffee, then moved to the records cabinet. She returned with a disk and put it into the second recorder in place of the status logs. "These hybrid crystal-disks are two-sided, but we only ever use one; writing to the second side increases the risk of data corruption. We would have found any video file that she might have written on the used side, but if she recorded to side two..." The monitor flickered into life. "Cunning witch," Ives breathed, admiringly.

"The question is _why_?" Ferretti noted. "God damnit," he muttered, angrily.

Dr Gupta's face had just appeared on the screen. She looked frightened.

"What's wrong?" Ives asked.

"It's just...She really is pretty, and more than that she's so...what's the word I'm looking for, Amanda?"

"Young?" Ives suggested, sadly.

"That's the one. It's such a waste. Whenever someone like her dies I wonder how it can be right that a stupid old warhorse like me is still going. I wonder what she had to say..." Dr Gupta began speaking and Ferretti's heart sank.

"Is that...?"

"Gujarati," Ives confirmed. "Whatever she was saying, she didn't want anyone to know about it. We'll have to send this back to Earth to get a translation; there are no other Gujarati speakers on base."

"I'll send it back to the SGC," Ferretti said. "The anth team there speak pretty much every language on Earth between them."

Ives shook her head, sadly. "What was so secret, Vera," she asked the dead woman on the screen. "What was it that you couldn't tell us?"

_*_

_Later still_

"What have we learned?" Ferretti asked.

There was a slightly awkward silence, which Roberts finally broke. "Well, I've learned to appreciate the relative sanity of my team mates," he said.

Merlyn sighed. "There was a momentary glitch in the outbound flight," she said. "There was a slight impurity in the naquadah – probably picked up in-flight – which caused a moment of turbulence and threw the flight time out by a few minutes."

"I'd worry less about that," Alexa said, staring vacantly into the middle-distance, "if it were not for the fact that the naquadah purged from the engine core after the flight contains not merely a material impurities, but psychic contamination."

"Psychic?" Ferretti asked, concerned.

Alexa brought her attention back to the team's improvised briefing room – known in its civilian life as the INSP cafeteria – and nodded her head in acknowledgment. "I was speaking to Roberts and he mentioned that there was a mystery contaminant in the naquadah. I went down and had a look and I could feel a residual psychic presence. A...a consciousness behind the contamination. I could not say for certain if there was a will directed against the _Munin_ , but whatever caused the glitch was a psychic signal of some sort."

"Can you be more specific, Alexa?" Roberts asked.

"Powerful," the Russian replied. "I mean, _really_ powerful; as in Song of the Scourge powerful. It wasn't the Scourge, however."

"You're sure about that?" Ferretti asked.

"I would have recognised the touch of a Scourge Mind," Alexa assured her CO. "This was different, but...well, it wasn't any more friendly than the Scourge. It was cold; hungry; extremely single-minded. I didn't like it and I get the feeling that it wouldn't have liked me much, assuming it had deigned to notice me."

"Well, that would explain the nightmares," Pearson said. "There's certainly nothing in the ship's design that could be responsible for that kind of influence; no bio-transmission sources or radiation leaks."

"Is the Lake in danger?" Ferretti asked. "Does this psychic force present a threat to the Gamma site?"

Alexa shook her head. "No. The psychic signal isn't aimed in this direction; it was a...a billion-to-one chance that the _Munin_ crossed the path of the transmission."

Ferretti nodded, not looking greatly comforted. "Can we find the source of the signal?"

"Not without going out there," Alexa replied.

"The sensors on the _Munin_ weren't calibrated to detect transmissions on those wavelengths," Pearson added. "There are some traces in the general logs, but nothing in sufficient depth to get a bearing. After all, they were only in the path of the signal for a fraction of a nanosecond."

"Alright then," Ferretti said. "So; what do we do now? Merlyn; what do you and Roberts make of the _Munin_ 's surviving crew?"

"They seem stable enough," Merlyn replied. "But their nightmares show no signs of abating. We agree that the best thing would be for them to be returned to Earth for psychiatric treatment. I don't think that they'll be up to much space travel in the near future."

"And Dr Lund?"

"If my noble guardians have not killed him, I'd say he will spend the rest of his life in an asylum. It's sad."

"Sad, Ma'am?" Pearson asked.

"A stupid, freak accident, Pearson," Alexa replied. "A simple, stupid, twist of fate and four lives are destroyed. A brilliant young woman has been killed by the man who adored her; he's well on his way to becoming an irredeemable basket case and their two companions – assuming that the nightmares don't consume them – can never again engage in the most exciting and rewarding work of their careers. All because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Is that all this is then?" Ferretti asked. "Do we just write this off as a tragic accident and let it lie?"

"Is there anything else we can do?" Roberts asked.

"We _could_ try to trace the signal," Pearson suggested. "The Lieutenant and I discussed the possibility and we believe that it could be done; and done safely."

Ferretti looked at the sergeant. "Explain," he ordered.

"We'd have to modify the _Munin_ 's hull to carry a psychic jamming resonance, but that would be easy enough; the flawless surface of the bonded polycarbide outer casing would be a perfect medium."

"Then we would have to take the ship back to the coordinates where the glitch occurred," Alexa went on, picking up seamlessly from Pearson. "Unfortunately the best navigator on the programme was Dr Gupta, but there are several members of the astrophysics lab who are capable of plotting the course for us to follow. Once we get to the edge of the signal path, we should be able to take a bearing without exposing ourselves unduly."

"What makes you think that the signal will still be there?" Roberts asked, doubtfully.

"Balance of probabilities, sir," Pearson answered. "The chances of the _Munin_ passing through the path of a psychic signal of that magnitude are astronomical; the chances of it doing so during a brief period during which that signal was active are...well, they're utterly ludicrous, sir. It was not a transient phenomenon; I'll swear to that, sir."

Ferretti nodded his head. "Alright," he agreed. "I'll go and ask Group Captain Ives if we can have the keys to the spaceship."

 

"Two conditions," Ives said, when Ferretti asked.

"Yes?"

"One: If the paintwork gets scratched, you pay to get it fixed."

"Agreed."

"Two: I come with you."

Ferretti frowned. Ives might have rank on him, but this was his team's investigation and the pre-Ancient was their preserve. When the chips were down – and assuming that the chips in question were actually shoggoths – the Behemoth Protocols would allow him to give orders to Group Captain Ives, Colonel Hendry, or even General O'Neill. "I'm not sure..." he began.

Ives raised an eyebrow in challenge. "Any of your team know how to fly a Raven-class test ship?"

"Well...When you put it like that," Ferretti allowed.

*

As the majority of the staff at the astrophysics lab were Russian, Ferretti sent Rasputin to pick up the details of their course. Quite aside from the fact that he was only a little better with Russians than General O'Neill, he suspected that the young lieutenant enjoyed the chance to be around her fellow countrymen; she even seemed to find the presence of thuggishly unprofessional NCOs to be a comfort.

The head of the astronavigation and stellar cartography unit was Academician Yuri Ivanovich Andropov, formerly of the Soviet – and later the Russian national – space program. Andropov was a crank, but a brilliant crank; in short, the sort of man who could only possibly have found gainful employment with the Stargate Program. Although he was a genius in the fields of rocketry and astronomy, his mistrust of computers was so great that his son had found permanent employment operating the machines that were a necessity in his work. According to rumour, he hung dog roses on the handle of his safe to keep his handwritten research notes from being stolen by water-spirits. Whether the latter was true or not, there was a definite smell of dog roses in the laboratory.

Andropov himself was the picture of respectability. His face was handsome, his grey hair neatly trimmed, his charcoal suit immaculate and expensive, his varifocal glasses sleek and stylish; only the unhealthy flare of zeal in his dark, dark eyes betrayed any sign of his reputed eccentricity. Ivan Yuriev Andropov could have been a photocopy of his father, if lack of definition had soothed away the wrinkles and false contrast darkened his hair, suit and even his eyes. The older Andropov was terse, but seemed to have more time for Alexa than for most of his colleagues. The younger appeared quite taken with the young lieutenant, although given some of her more recent experiences this made Alexa feel nervous, rather than flattered.

"The relevant navigational data has been placed upon this data crystal," Andropov Jr. explained, passing the small device to Alexa. "This course should take you to the same spatial coordinates that the _Munin_ arrived at on its maiden long-range flight."

Andropov Sr. snorted, disdainfully.

"Academician?" Alexa asked.

"Just ignore him," Andropov Jr. told her. "He's having one of his little moments, I'm afraid. Those course calculations are precise."

"They are useless!" Andropov Sr. insisted. His voice had a rich timbre, which gave him an air of authority that his son lacked.

"Father...!" Andropov Jr. slipped into Russian, presumably to disguise his words from Alexa; a rather futile gesture, but perhaps one made habit after eight months working among non-Russians.

"These figures will _not_ take you to the destination of the initial flight," Andropov Sr. insisted, addressing himself to Alexa and largely ignoring his son. " _No_ figures will take you to wherever those poor bastards ended up."

"Father, please...Please, Lieutenant Rasputin, my father works too hard and..."

"Oh, shut up, you foolish oaf!" Andropov Sr. exploded. "I am _not_ having one of my 'little moments' as you insist on calling them; I am having one of my sustained periods of astonishing genius and I am telling you" – he turned back to Alexa – "that the _Munin_ did not end up at the end of that course."

"Then where did it end up?" Alexa asked.

Andropov Jr. groaned, no doubt seeing his cushy job slipping away from him. He turned away, having failed to silence his father affecting to put a distance between them.

Andropov Sr. cast a glower at his son. "Nowhere," he replied. "The star clusters displayed on the screens which I have only now been permitted to see are all wrong. My son insists that there must have been an untraced fault in the sensors, but _I_ say that the stars shown in the images – although in their basic layout conforming to the arrangement of certain stars in our galaxy – are _not_ stars at all. The spectrographic analysis is all wrong; I can not conclude anything but that the _Munin_ went _elsewhere_."

"What do you mean _elsewhere_?" Alexa demanded, mirroring Andropov's emphasis.

Andropov looked at her for a long moment, taking in her earnest interest with a mixture of flattered pride and something akin to incredulity. "Alright," he said at last. "I mean that a spectroscopic analysis of the stars on that display reveals that they are not stars. It is as though the _Munin_ somehow managed to find its way out of our galaxy and into one where all the stars were fusing _lithium_ instead of hydrogen. Which – in case your astrophysics is a little shaky..."

"Assume shakiness," Alexa allowed.

"...goes well beyond simply being a physical impossibility. The only other alternative is that the _Munin_ was in a place where the basic laws of optics no longer functioned, which is equally impossible and just as disturbing."

"I see," Alexa said, calmly.

"You are taking this very well," Andropov noted. "Most people would be making worried noises and examining my contract by now."

Alexa shrugged. "I'm not most people. I thank you for your honesty, Academician Andropov."

"Please, Lieutenant; Yura."

Alexa nodded her acknowledgement. "Shura, then."

"I hope you are not intending to follow this course, Shura," Andropov said, softly.

Alexa shrugged. "I have a great many virtues, Yura," she replied, "but common sense is not really one of them. Thank you for your concern. Goodbye, Yura; goodbye, Dr Andropov!" she called.

"Lieutenant," Andropov Jr. mumbled, crossly. He seemed baffled and almost disappointed that his father was not being escorted from the building.

"Be careful," Andropov Sr. pressed.

"What makes you so sure that this _elsewhere_ is such a bad place?" Alexa asked, curiously, "all we know is that it is different."

"Disobeying the laws of physics is not different, it is disturbing. For starters, if this is an optical effect, then there is something wrong with _space_ and there shouldn't actually be very much _in_ space to be wrong. I do not know how Dr Gupta managed to get that ship back from... _elsewhere_ , but I would not count on ever repeating the feat."

Alexa nodded, slowly. "We will...take it under advisement," she promised. "More than that, I can not say."

*

Group Captain Ives had been working in the _Munin_ for several hours, trying to bring the systems to the same status as they had been on the initial flight; or as near as was practically possible. She was running the hundred-and-ninth stress test of the auxiliary power-distribution grid when Ferretti rapped on the frame of the cabin door. He was carrying a large, green plastic field case and a clipboard.

"I think I'm almost there, Lou," Ives said. "That is, _I_ should get some sleep before we go, but the _ship_ is almost ready." She sounded rather less keen on the idea than she had done before Ferretti relayed Andropov's warning.

"You don't have to come, Amanda," Ferretti reminded her. "I'm no mean pilot and Merlyn and Roberts...well, they have their wings at least."

"I do have to come, Ferretti," she replied. "This is my ship. If it's hurt anyone, I have to sort that out. I'm not crazy about the idea of flying off to Neverland, but it's better than letting your lot go alone."

Ferretti nodded his understanding. "I need you to sign this, Amanda," he said, awkwardly, handing over the clipboard.

"What is it?" Ives asked. She tried to skim read the top page, but the bulk of the document was covered by masking tape.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that until you've signed," Ferretti admitted, awkwardly. "It's to do with your clearance."

Ives actually looked alarmed. "What the hell is going to happen that goes above Majestic clearance?"

"It's not so much above," Ferretti hedged, "more to the side."

"Now I'm scared," Ives admitted, but she signed the document anyway.

"Great." Ferretti took the clipboard back. "If it helps, I've brought you a present."

Ives looked up at him. "A present?"

"Yep," Ferretti agreed. He lifted the case. "I've never yet met a girl who didn't feel better for a new dress."

Ives stood and came over. Ferretti held the case while she opened it.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

Ives laughed. "I love it," she assured him, "although I'm not sure I'll be able to wear it to many parties."

"Is it your first Omega suit?" Ferretti asked.

"Yes it is."

He nodded. "I'll get Merlyn to help you with the seals. It's not a guarantee of safety, but it's the best we've got."

"Your optimism is encouraging."

"Optimism never suited me," he replied. "I look better in black."

*

_Next morning_

Ives was already aboard the _Munin_ when SG-7 arrived. After a short lesson from Merlyn, she had secured her own Omega suit before boarding; Ferretti checked the seals while she ran pre-flight checks and found them to be sound.

"You learn fast," he noted.

"I've got used to adjusting to new technology," Ives replied.

Ferretti smiled. "That must be a useful knack here," he noted. "How long until your checks are completed?"

Ives gave a soft chuckle. "I completed the pre-flight checks over an hour ago, Ferretti; this is the third time I have run them. I'm not prepared to take any chances on this of all flights."

"Understandable," Ferretti agreed. "Where do you want us?"

Ives did not need to look up from her checks to answer. "You can take the co-pilot's chair," she told Ferretti. "In fact, you will be the first person ever to do so; the test flights operated without a back-up pilot. Sergeant Pearson, if you could take the engineering station by the drive-room hatch then you will be able to monitor performance throughout the flight."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Captain Lloyd, you will take the navigation station; Lieutenant Roberts, the observation seat beside her, if you do not mind?"

"Of course not, Ma'am," Roberts replied.

Ives turned to look at Merlyn and Roberts. "I ask because navigation was Dr Gupta's seat and observation Dr Lund's."

"We understand," Merlyn assured her.

Ives gave a small nod of acknowledgement. "Alright then. Lieutenant Rasputin, there's a second observation seat at the back of the cabin. There shouldn't be a call for any of you to do anything but monitor the systems and sensors; in case of emergency, just do exactly as I tell you."

Ferretti watched his team find their places. "Emergencies notwithstanding, Rasputin, you just keep a mind open; leave the monitors to the rest of us."

"A mind?" Ives asked, confused.

"That's what you signed that clearance form for," Ferretti explained. "The lieutenant is more than just a pretty face, Group Captain; she's also psychic."

Ives tried hard to stifle her knee jerk reaction, but the laugh sneaked out. "Psychic?" she scoffed. "Are you serious?"

"Always," Ferretti replied. "Well...Sometimes. This time. She's a useful girl to have around."

"And I'm available in any colour," Alexa said.

"So long as it's red," Roberts added.

Alexa chuckled. "You know that joke is about thirty years out of date?"

"Call it a golden oldie," Ferretti suggested.  "Now buckle up and I hope everyone's been because there's no rest stops for about sixty billion miles."

"Actually, Lou, we won't need buckles unless the inertial compensators fail," Ives pointed out. "If they do fail...Well, a seat belt isn't going to do much good anyway." She paused for a moment. "Also, if anyone is worried, we _do_ have a toilet."

"Good to know." Ferretti turned to Sergeant Pearson. "Are the sensors recalibrated?"

"Yes, Sir," Pearson replied. "We're set up to detect bio-transmissions; the scopes are clear of all but background babble at the moment."

Ferretti nodded. "Then we're ready to go, Group Captain," he told Ives. "We're in your hands."

"In that case, if there are no other preparations...?"

"There is one thing I can't help wondering," Roberts admitted.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"How do we see where we're going? Shouldn't there be a great big window at the front of the cabin?"

Ives shook her head, sadly. "This is what too much TV does to people," she told Ferretti. "We can't have a great big window because it would shatter when we went into hyperspace. Even the _Prometheus_ only had faux windows – screens that imitated a forward viewing port – until the Asgard fitted her with shields. I'm afraid that the _Munin_ doesn't have such amenities; it's all we can do to give her sufficient shielding to deflect high-velocity micro-meteors during hyperflight."

"Then how do we know where we're going?" Roberts asked.

"Like the submariner, we shall be dependent on our instruments," Ives told him. "External views can be called up on any of the displays and the sensors will let us know if we're about to hit anything. Are there any more questions? Good." Ives keyed in the ignition sequence and the _Munin_ 's engines purred into life. "Lloyd," she said, "activate the navigational interface and send the course to the main control console."

"Yes, Ma'am," Merlyn acknowledged. The controls of the Munin were very clearly labelled and for the most part, automated. "Alright. Is that it?"

"Very good, Lloyd. Inertial compensators online, Sergeant."

"Compensators online," Pearson confirmed.

"Engines coupled to primary drives; navigational shields activated." Ives lowered one hand to a collective lever at the side of her seat and with the other took hold of the main control yoke.

"This thing flies like a helicopter?" Roberts asked.

"Only in close proximity to a planetary or stellar mass," Ives replied. "The gravitational collective is unimportant in interstitial space." She touched a switch on the yoke and spoke into her headset. "Tower, this is Raven-1, requesting permission for lift off; over."

"Raven-1, this is Tower. Roger that, you are clear for take off; over."

"Roger that, Tower." Ives pulled up on the lever and the ship rose with barely a judder from the landing field. Only the altimeters gave any indication of position; there was no shift in pressure as they ascended to the clouds and beyond, no great shaking of the vessel and no sense of acceleration beyond the merest hint that the compensators left in order to prevent disorientation.

"In fact, once we're away from the planet everything switches over to computer control anyway," Ives admitted. "It's just a matter of entering the course plot and keeping an eye out for debris. Frankly, any vehicle larger than a fighter is pretty dull to drive these days; they do all the work for you." She turned her attention back to the radio. "Tower, this is Raven-1. We have reached escape orbit and we are ready to switch to automatic pilot for the flight to L2. ETA at Lagrange is T-plus seventy-six minutes; over."

"Affirmative, Raven-1. Godspeed; Tower out."

Ives released the controls and touched the main panel; a green light came on to reassure her that the autopilot was functioning and that the systems saw no need for a human to take control. "Nothing much for us to do now except keep an eye on the dials," she said. "See how exciting it is on the bleeding edge of technological research?"

"Trust me, Group Captain," Ferretti said, darkly, "I hope to God this mission stays this boring."

"But don't we want to find out what happened to my crew?" Ives asked.

"Sure," Roberts replied, "but we don't want whatever happened to them to find _us_ out. The same thing could well happen to us and that's a little more interesting than I like. We're looking for traces of what happened; it's the difference between treading on a tiger's tail and just getting some of its crap on your hiking boots."

"You have such a way with words," Ives told the lieutenant.

"Just be glad that he can't see the view," Merlyn said. "He gets terribly gothic when he can see the stars."

"That simply isn't true," Roberts protested.

Ferretti nodded his head, sagely. "Be fair, Captain; he's _always_ gothic."

"He writes angst poetry?" Ives asked.

"No. He's not a Goth, he's just...gothic. Like a cathedral. He's terribly portentous; it's like living with Catherine Morland."

Roberts gave a sharp laugh. "I resent that comparison."

"In all fairness, he does lack the enchanting naivety," Alexa noted.

"I certainly wouldn't be the first to label Roberts an artless debutante," Merlyn agreed.

Ives leaned across to whisper to Ferretti: "Are they always like this?"

"'Fraid so."

"And I'm stuck in a single cabin with them for the next thirty hours?"

Ferretti shrugged. "Your choice, Group Captain," he reminded her. "If you take my advice, you'll let them squabble and watch the monitors while we exercise our CO's prerogative...and get some sleep."

Ives took his advice, tilted back her chair and closed her eyes. As she drifted out of consciousness, the last sounds that she heard were the voices of the team.

"They say you learn a lot about people when you spend time in enforced proximity," Pearson noted.

Alexa sounded unconcerned. "While I'm not keen to learn many of Roberts' secrets, I'm not sure what thirty hours in a spaceship will reveal that two weeks in the Animal House quarantine room didn't turn up."

Roberts chuckled. "I don't know; who knew the Colonel read Austen?"

"Who knew _you_ did?" Merlyn replied.

*

Ives woke briefly to oversee the _Munin_ 's transition into hyperspace; Ferretti remained fast asleep until the turbulence jolted both officers into wakefulness.

"Lieutenant Rasputin?" Ferretti demanded. There was no response and when he turned he saw that the Russian's eyes were squeezed tightly-closed in concentration. "Sergeant?" he asked.

"The scanners are clear now," Pearson replied, "but we picked up a powerful burst of bio-transmissions during the period of turbulence. The burst lasted approximately...zero-point-zero-one seconds."

"Be _less_ approximate," Ives ordered, impatiently. "I assume you rounded up?"

"Not by much," Pearson said. "According to the log it lasted zero-point-zero-zero-eight-six-three-and some more."

"That isn't possible," Ives insisted. "Send the readings to the command console."

"Yes, Ma'am," Pearson replied, fighting manfully to keep the resentment from his voice. Ferretti knew that the sergeant was sensitive regarding his lack of formal training and that it stung him for an officer to question his technical judgement, let alone his ability to read a display accurately.

Ives paused for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and uncertain. "My apologies, Sergeant," she said. "But that means that the signal was covering an area of space more than a dozen parsecs across. I thought that we were talking about a narrow beam, directed signal. The power to blast a signal that strong across such a wide area..."

"It was an echo," Alexa interrupted. Her voice sounded distant and distracted.

"An echo?" Ferretti asked.

Alexa nodded. "The signal was a thought," she explained, "but a thought without a will. A thought sustaining itself beyond the thinking of it."

Five chairs swivelled in her direction.

"You want to try again, Rasputin?" Ferretti asked.

Alexa frowned. "Perhaps...Call it a memory. The _memory_ of a very powerful thought, held, suspended, in the very fabric of space and time."

"A _thought_?" Ives said, disbelievingly. "Lieutenant, have you any idea what kind of power a mind would have to be generating..."

The Russian's eyes flared in anger as she once more interrupted the Group Captain. "Have you?" she demanded. Her voice was quiet, but incredibly forceful and Ives flinched before Alexa's fury, momentarily heedless of their respective ranks.

"Lieutenant," Ferretti said, softly.

After a moment, Alexa recovered herself. "I am sorry, Group Captain Ives," she said, softly. "To answer your question, yes, I do know what kind of power would be needed and I have encountered more than one mind capable of doing it."

"But that's...inconceivable! No human mind..."

"Yes," Ferretti admitted. "No _human_ mind; and there's the rub."

"An alien?"

"And not only to our planet," Merlyn added in a haunted tone. "This kind of psychic force strongly suggests the presence of Elder Threat elements; of outsiders."

"It would suggest a being of _at least_ Nodens' power," Alexa added, her voice shaking only slightly when she mentioned Nodens' name, "very probably greater." She turned briefly back to her console. "I was focusing too much of my energies on blocking out the influence to sense much of its nature, but there is one possibility. One thing that might enable us to narrow down our list of suspects, as it were."

"Do tell," Ferretti said.

"Well, Sir; according to the biomonitors in your Omega suits, you were in deep, delta sleep when we intersected the path of the memory, but the Group Captain was in REM sleep: dreaming, in other words. It's just possible, Ma'am, that you would have experienced the same dreams as the original crew."

"Well there's a cheerful thought!" Ives exclaimed.

"The intensity would have been lower," Pearson assured her. "To judge by the deflection of our course and the lieutenant's assurances, the signal strength has been greatly reduced. Added to the protection of your Omega suit, you might not have noticed, but if you remember anything out of place in your dreams, just before you woke up..."

"What exactly would you deem to be out of place in a dream, Sergeant?" Ives asked. "Apart from dwarves and red curtains, of course. I've been dreaming about flying squid every night since Vera was killed; how would I know if they were imaginary space squid or space squid insinuated into my dreams by a miasmal psychic presence?"

There was a long pause.

"Good point," Ferretti admitted. "So where do we stand, then?"

"We're half-way to a destination that may or may not be in this universe, all thanks to a bio-transmission of unknown source and nature," Pearson summarised.

"Are we still in the path of the transmission?"

"No, Sir."

"Am I going to have evil squid dreams that drive me mad if I go back to sleep?"

Pearson shrugged. "It's a risk we take every time we close our eyes."

Ferretti pondered for a long moment, then nodded in satisfaction. "I like those odds," he declared. "Wake me up when we arrive or something happens. If we don't find anything, Rasputin can talk to the mad Ruskie – no offence..."

"None taken," Alexa assured him.

"...when we get back."

"You seem very calm, given where we are and what happened to this ship's last crew," Ives noted, dryly. Ferretti did not answer, his breathing already fallen into the easy rhythm of sleep. Ives turned to face the other members of SG-7.

"You get used to it," Alexa replied. "Either that or you go mad."

Ives raised an eyebrow. "And how many have gone mad?" she asked.

Alexa winked. "Just the five of us, so far."

_*_

_The Gamma Site_

"Imagine, for the sake of convenience," Andropov Sr. explained, "travelling through hyperspace can be seen as moving in a straight line to pass more quickly between two points in space than by following the curved path which is the shortest route connecting them in real space; except that, of course, in real space the shortest route is actually a straight line. The hyperspatial line is simply _straighter_."

"Straighter than straight?" Alexa asked, baffled.

"In a sense, yes," Andropov replied. "Take a look at this," he suggested, holding up a piece of wire. "What shape is it?"

"An arc," Alexa replied.

Andropov turned the wire so that the apex of the arc faced directly towards Alexa. "And now?"

"Still an arc," Alexa assured him. "It just looks straight. I understand that much."

"Quite so," Andropov agreed. He picked up another wire. "What about this one?"

"Straight," she said. "It's just a straight line."

"Is it?"

"Yes. Well; almost."

"And what if you were to look at it in four dimensions?" Andropov challenged.

Alexa raised her hands in submission. "Alright. This is the point in mathematics when my brain always starts to whimper."

Andropov smiled. "Then I thank you for indulging me this far, especially as the analogy is beyond basic. The point is that a hyperspace flight usually appears – superficially – like a straight line from the reference of the ship travelling it, whereas your last flight looks more like...this." He held up yet another wire, this with a kink abouthalfway along its length.

"I see," Alexa said.

"You do?"

"Not remotely. I mean, I can see it's not straight, but..."

"In layman's terms, you were driven off course by the current," Andropov explained. "Of course, in this instance the course is a five dimensional hyperspace path, the current is a massively powerful electromagnetic transmission of biological origin and even the layman has an advanced degree in the physical sciences."

"So we ended up somewhere other than we were aiming for?" Alexa asked.

Andropov nodded. "Precisely so. However, the return journey was skewed by close enough to the same – for want of a better word – angle and you were therefore delayed by no more than a few hours."

"But the original flight was further off course?"

"Something like that," Andropov hedged. "Only...The closest I can estimate, the path of the _Munin_ 's original flight would be less a curve or an angle and more" – he picked up a small print of a Penrose triangle, its vertices folding impossibly on themselves, and held it up – "this."

Alexa gave a low whistle. "I still have no idea what you're talking about, Yura," she confessed, "but I get that it isn't good."

"Quite. Essentially, the _Munin_ emerged several hundred light years off course and about three dimensions out of phase. The fact that the hull and shielding held up under those conditions is a testament to dumb luck as much as to the quality of the engineering, but that still left the problem of how to get home."

"But why didn't the crew report this?" Alexa demanded.

"Because, Shura, they never knew," Andropov said. "We received the translation of Dr Gupta's recording. She was aware that the ship had gone off course, and that the discrepancy was one of more than merely distance, but she concealed this from the rest of the crew so as to prevent a panic. She located the cause of the diversion and gambled that the return journey could correct the shift if she aimed through the path of the disturbance, which she did not recognise as a transmission of any kind.

"I ordered a full search of her quarters and workspace," the Academician went on, "and they found a series of disks. It seems that Dr Gupta was trying to resolve the problem herself; she had become obsessed by it, but she refused to share it with anyone else."

Alexa nodded, slowly. "Did she sleep during the layover?" she asked.

Andropov frowned, then delved into his files. "I...I don't know," he admitted. "Let me see. Ah...no. No, I do not believe that she did. The others logged rest time; twelve hours each for Dr Sterling and Captain Mollett and...Oh; only _four_ hours for Dr Lund."

"So the two who had not slept properly were worst affected by the transmission. That would make sense and explain why Sterling and Mollett remain relatively sane."

"Only relatively?" Andropov asked.

"I thought that everything was relative," Alexa said.

Andropov shrugged. "The Stargate Program has been unkind to Einstein," he assured her.

Alexa sighed. "But the million dollar question remains," she said. "What is the cause of all this? Where did the transmission originate?"

"And when," Andropov added.

"That's easy," Alexa told him. "The key feature of biotransmissions – psychic phenomena – is that they function at superlight speeds; their influence is almost instantaneous, even at interstellar distances."

"Indeed?" Andropov teased.

"Stop that. And yes, indeed. That was what they wanted..."

"What they wanted with what?" Andropov asked.

"Nothing!" Alexa snapped, defensively. "It doesn't matter. Just...biotransmissions are near-instantaneous. Whatever the phenomenon is, it's current."

"Really?" Andropov asked again.

"Yes, _really_."

"How interesting."

Alexa scowled at Andropov. "All right," she said at last, "I'll bite. Why is that interesting?"

Andropov smiled. "Because, my dear Shura, if that is the case then I can give you a good idea as to _where_ the signal originated."

*

This time SG-7 convened in the project team's briefing room, for reasons of secrecy, with Ives present on behalf of her team members, living and dead. Alexa opened with a summary of their current state of knowledge.

"According to Academician Andropov, the signal can be traced back, or at least its direction plotted, based on our readings. He has carried out an exhaustive search of worlds in the path of the trace and has come up with an address for the nearest Gated world along the path; the world designated 'Source-1', or P3G-039 in the dialling computer's parlance."

Ferretti frowned at the computer display. "And what if the source of the transmission was further along the path?"

Alexa looked uncomfortable.

"Rasputin?"

"Frankly, Sir, if the signal originated even on the next closest world, then regardless the relatively low degree of attenuation suffered by biotransmissions as a result of distance...Well, Sir; essentially, what it comes down to is that if the source is further away from the _Munin_ 's course than P3G-039, we might as well just put our heads between our legs and bid a fond farewell to our backsides."

"Your optimism remains refreshing," Ives said.

"A human will would be nothing by comparison," Alexa explained. "If you got close enough to identify such a thing, you would be incapable of recognising yourself as separate to it."

Ives shivered. "I'm starting to wish I hadn't signed that piece of paper."

"Is the Gate on P3G-039 viable?" Pearson asked. "The easiest way to find the source of the transmission would be to send up a UAV with a full sensor package to do a fly-by, and UAVs tend not to suffer identity crises."

"We don't know yet," Alexa replied. "We're not dialling the address until we're sure we're as ready as we can be."

Ferretti nodded in agreement. "The deal is this: For fear of contamination, this exploration will be launched from the Delta Site. They're shifting a UAV launch platform to the Animal House as we brief; we send it through once we get there. If there is a Gate and if the place isn't crawling with Scourge or a boiling fog of semi-liquid methyl trichloride, we'll follow the recon in to establish the nature and extent of the threat; assuming that there _is_ a threat."

"Can we doubt it?" Alexa asked. "There is a mind out there; a powerful, malevolent mind. How can it not be a threat?"

Ferretti shrugged. "I'm assured it was nothing but dumb luck that the _Munin_ was caught in the path of the beam. This thing could grope around with its mind for a million years and never touch anyone we either know or care about. If all it's doing is groping..." He looked at Merlyn and narrowed his eyes, thoughtfully. "What do you think, Merlyn?"

Merlyn looked up, distractedly. "Hmm?"

"This doesn't seem to be one of your good days, Captain Lloyd," Ferretti noted.

"I'm alright...I think," Merlyn insisted.

Roberts settled forward in his seat. "You've been acting spooked since the flight," he noted. "Did you sense something on the flight after all?"

"No more than you did," she replied. "It's just...Something I felt _before_ ; a memory that the feeling in the _Munin_ reminded me of. It's not important."

Alexa gave a short laugh.

"Lieutenant?" Merlyn said, sharply. "You have a comment to make?"

Alexa blushed. "I'm sorry, Ma'am. I...I'm tired; keeping my defences up during the flight was...It's just...permission to speak freely?" she asked.

Ferretti glanced at Merlyn, knowing that his 2IC was likely to take the brunt of any criticism from Alexa. He gave a slight tilt of his head, indicating that she should make the call.

"Granted, Lieutenant Rasputin," Merlyn allowed.

Alexa nodded, gratefully. "You're used to trusting your instincts and your training, but _not_ your feelings; all of you are the same. If the touch of the psychic signal reminded you of something then it is entirely possible that the two things are related. No two biotransmissions are alike, or even close. I've had The Scourge and Nodens _right inside_ my head. In both cases it was like having my mind blotted out by white noise and pain, but the sensations were still very different; like the difference between having a red-hot knife ground into your kidneys and having your shoulder twisted out of its socket."

"You know the difference?" Roberts asked, shrewdly.

Alexa shrugged. "I've been around. But the point is that what you felt was almost certainly the same thing that you were remembering, Ma'am. Trust me; on this assignment, what you _feel_ will almost always be important."

Ferretti turned back to Merlyn. "So what is it you remembered?" he asked.

Merlyn closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. "The church," she admitted. "I remembered the church in the Deep One village."

"The place where all of this started," Roberts realised.

"The place where we were almost eaten by fish-men," Pearson added.

"Eaten?" Ives was shocked.

"Eaten...Yes..." Roberts agreed, awkwardly.

Merlyn carefully avoided Roberts eye. "Yes. Anyway, that was what I remembered. That moment in the church when...when I lost my nerve. My faith."

There was a long, awkward pause.

"Who did they worship?" Alexa asked. "Who was the church dedicated to?"

"The Philistine fish-god, Dagon," Roberts replied. "Only...Their Dagon was nothing but a giant Deep One and we... _Merlyn_ killed him."

Merlyn shook her head. "Dagon was just an avatar," she said. "The real" – she paused, reluctant to use the next word of any being but one – "god of that village was Dagon's master, the creator of the Deep Ones; the Great Old One known as Cthulhu."

"So the force might be exerted by this...Cthulhu?" Ferretti asked.

Merlyn squirmed in her seat. "I sincerely hope not," she replied. "If it is...We would be talking about a being with power _far_ in excess of that possessed by Dagon _or_ Nodens."

"Bozhe moi," Alexa murmured. Pearson gave a low whistle; even Roberts looked alarmed.

"Alright," Ferretti sighed. "Well, let's work from the principle that this Cthulhu _is_ our perp, and if it isn't then at least we're not underestimating the danger."

"We should bear in mind, Sir, that Cthulhu was the greatest among many," Merlyn was quick to point out. "The descriptions of squid-like beings moving through space could refer to any one of a thousand thousand Star-Spawn, all akin to Cthulhu in kind and malice."

Ferretti stared at Merlyn. "Great. Now you're talking like him," he said, nodding his head towards Roberts.

"A thousand thousand would conventionally be a million," Pearson noted.

"Thank you, Sergeant," Merlyn replied, with a roll of her eyes. "And I _was_ quoting – or paraphrasing anyway – from the Liber Ivonis if you're interested."

"I'll add it to my 'to read' list," Ferretti promised.

"I'd rather you didn't, Sir; it's a very dangerous book."

Ferretti shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about it; I'm a slow reader. My baby sister got me a copy of _Catcher in the Rye_ when I was fifteen and I still haven't cracked the cover."

"I had no idea the book was written so long ago," Roberts declared.

Ferretti shook his head, sadly. "I'm not that old, I just look it from dealing with you lot."

The rest of the team chuckled, their dark mood broke for a moment and when it returned it was without such force. Ferretti tipped the tiniest of nods towards Roberts, grateful for his help in lifting the team's spirits. It was not much, but it was something.

"Contact the SGC," Ferretti told Merlyn. "Get any books that you might need sent out and read up as much as you can; you'll lead the briefing at the Delta Site before we leave for Source-1. We ship out for the Animal House at oh-seven-hundred Zulu; all of you get some sleep before then, including you, Captain Lloyd."

"Yes, Sir," Merlyn replied, ruefully, well-aware of her – not entirely undeserved – reputation as a workaholic. By dint of long habit, she was perfectly capable of functioning on five hours of sleep per night for upwards of a week and knowledge was going to serve them better than rest on P3G-039. Now that her CO had made a point of it, however, she would _have_ to sleep; she just hoped that she wouldn't miss anything because of it. "I'd like to go back to the SGC and rope Eleri in on my research," she added.

Ferretti nodded. "We'll meet you at the Delta Site at oh-seven-hundred, then. Rasputin, I pretty much want you to sleep through if you can; we'll need you fresh."

"I'll do my best, Sir."

"Pearson, check over the Omega suits; can you bring forward the thousand mile service or whatever it is?"

"Hundred hour," Pearson supplied. "Check the seals, a full purge of the filters, refresh the nano-shields and membranes. Matter of a couple of hours; I'll get on it right away."

"Good." Ferretti turned to Roberts. "Lieutenant...With Pearson on the suits, you get the weapons check, then your time is your own."

Roberts gave a contented sigh and folded his hands behind his head. "Ah, the easy life. The benefits of stupidity."

Ferretti grinned. "You'll earn your keep when we get to Source-1," he assured the lieutenant. "I don't anticipate it being a friendly place."

Roberts inclined his head in understanding. "I'll be sure and get some sleep, then."

"And what about me?" Ives asked.

Ferretti sighed. "You're cleared for Behemoth intelligence, but not for full fieldwork," he said apologetically. "I'm afraid you'll have to leave this to us. I wish I could offer more concrete hope for your people..."

"It's... something to know that what happened is real, and not just a psychological reaction to the vastness of space. My work is here, and we owe you our thanks that it can continue. I just... It will never be the same," she admitted.

*

_P3G-039_

SG-7 went through the Stargate from the SGC high-security quarantine facility and emerged into a scene from the Book of Revelations.

The Stargate stood on the side of a hill overlooking the city, in the middle of a little circle of flagstones, ringed with grass and plots of flowering plants. The place had the look of a public space, a memorial garden perhaps; a quiet place where people might come on a Sunday afternoon. At that moment, however, it was not quiet.

The architecture of the city itself would not have looked out of place in New York, or it would not have done if it had not been – for the most part – on fire. The smoke wafted up and over the hillside and the muted echoes of gunfire and screaming rose from the streets to the ears of the visiting Tau'ri. The skyscrapers were broken and topless, the smaller buildings ruined and flattened. In all directions, scattered clumps of people staggered along the roads which led from the metropolis into the country. The city had been gutted and now the last of its human lifeblood was leaking away.

"What do you make of it, Roberts?" Ferretti asked.

The lieutenant scrutinised the scene with his sharp, blue eyes for a long moment before committing himself to an answer. "This isn't the hand of uncaring providence," he decided.

"War?"

"Aerial bombardment. Pre-nuclear; some incendiaries by the looks of things, although any bomb can start fires. There are people down there, but I can't see any sign of large-scale emergency management or enforcement. It'll be dangerous, but probably not contaminated; not beyond our suit capabilities, anyway."

Ferretti did not look away from the ruin of the city, but Alexa knew that his next words were directed at her. "Do you feel anything?"

"Blind panic," she said. "So many people, all experiencing the same fear; I can sense it from here. But no biosignals," she added. "There's just the echo, even fainter than before. If the source is here, it's gone completely dormant."

Ferretti nodded, slowly. "That's what the UAV said as well," he admitted. "We'll take a closer look before we go. Merlyn, that's you and take the louies with you. Sergeant Pearson and I will rig up the modial and set up an observation post while you three nose around the suburbs and see what stinks."

"Have I ever told you how much I love this job?" Roberts asked.

"Head straight back if things turn ugly and check in every fifteen minutes," Ferretti added. "And for G...For the sake of General O'Neill's blood pressure, try not to pick up any strays. 'Kay?"

"Got it," Merlyn agreed.

 

As Merlyn led her team down towards the edge of the city. The sounds of strife grew louder, the sporadic gunfire and the cries of pain and terror.

"What is wrong with this place?" Alexa wondered aloud.

"Panic," Roberts replied. "Anarchy, chaos; gang warfare."

Merlyn shook  her head. "No," she declared. "Not gangs; cults." As they walked past a burning office block, she indicated a massive graffito; the luminous green image of a colossal, winged cephalopod. She did not need to know the alphabet or language to recognise that the writing in the graffito was a scriptural quotation.

"Squid worship," Alexa realised. "So the people here consider our transmission source to be a deity?"

"I don't think it's the source that they worship," Merlyn sighed. "I hope that I am wrong, but..." She paused and cocked her head to look at Roberts, whose attention had been caught by something in the fractured remains of the brownstone edifice opposite the office block. "Roberts?"

"Nothing," Roberts replied, wandering away towards an alleyway on the left-hand side of the ruin.

Merlyn nodded and motioned for Alexa to follow her as she walked slowly towards the building. "Do you remember that worst case scenario that we discussed in the briefing?"

"I remember several."

"The one that you mentioned."

"Oh...balls."

Merlyn smiled. "You're really starting to fit in, you know?"

"Thanks." Alexa turned to look at the graffito, putting her back to the brownstone. "You know there's someone in there, don't you?"

Merlyn nodded. "We're just waiting for..."

Her radio crackled. "In position, Captain."

"Roger that, Lieutenant." Merlyn faced the building. "You can come out," she said. "We won't hurt you."

There was a scrambling noise from behind the broken windows, then a sharp scream and the sounds of a struggle.

"Roberts?" Alexa asked.

"Who else," Merlyn replied. "Come on; quick."

Merlyn led the way into the building, with Alexa close on her heels. They entered the remains of someone's home to see Roberts struggling with two assailants. He seemed to have the measure of his foes, but subduing the two of them at once while keeping their hands from his many weapons was almost too much even for a combatant of Roberts' skill.

"Little help?" he asked.

"Rasputin," Merlyn said.

Alexa grinned. "Yes, Ma'am." The Russian snapped the foregrip of her MPX closed and holstered the weapon. She advanced and pulled the eight year old girl away from Roberts, freeing his right arm to hold off the girl's brother, who looked closer to twelve.

"Get off her!" the boy screamed, thrashing out at Alexa.

"It's alright," Merlyn insisted, moving between them and facing the boy. "I promise you, we won't hurt you. We're friends."

"There are no friends!" The boy spat.

"Yes there are," Merlyn assured him, "and we are they." She reached out a hand and brushed the tangled hair away from the boy's forehead.

The boy looked into Merlyn's eyes and his savage, directionless rage faded a little. "You with one of the cults?" he asked.

"No," Merlyn promised. "We're not with the cults."

"She really doesn't have much truck with cults," Roberts assured him. "We just need to talk to you about what happened here."

"Let go of me!" The boy demanded.

Roberts looked to Merlyn, who nodded. "Rasputin; let the girl go."

"Yes Ma'am."

The two children moved together as soon as they were loose. They looked around, weighing up their options, then planted themselves on a couch that had somehow survived the devastation. The boy reached out and took the girl by the hand. Their clothes were shabby, as though they had not been changed in days, their faces were dirty and their hair was matted and tangled. Their matching blue-grey eyes confirmed that they were brother and sister.

Merlyn crouched down in front of the couch. "I'm Merlyn," she said. "What's your name?"

"I'm Kede," the boy replied. "This is my sister, Theya."

"And where are your parents?"

Kede looked away. Theya's eyes welled up with tears and her brother squeezed her hand, tightly.

"I'm sorry," Merlyn said.

When Kede spoke it was in a low whisper. "Father joined one of the cults. Mother wouldn't."

_*_

Ferretti shook his head in mock-despair as Merlyn's team returned. "Merlyn!" he called down. "I distinctly remember saying 'no strays'. That's at least _thirty_ strays; can't you count?"

"Yes, Sir," Merlyn replied, "and there are thirty-six, most of them younger than fourteen. There are dozens more like them in the city."

"Which I'm sure you know is _not_ the kind of thing that General O'Neill likes to hear in the reports from his field teams." He attempted to stare Merlyn down, but his heart simply was not in it. "Convince me," he sighed. "Pearson, break out all the MREs we've got. These kids look like they could use some food and that's the closest we have."

"Yes, Sir."

"Rasputin, you're in charge of this lot. Put that girl down, Roberts; I'll need a tactical evaluation from you."

"Sir." Roberts lowered Theya to the ground and ushered her in Pearson's direction. For someone who had been trying to stab him with his own knife less than an hour before, Theya seemed remarkably reluctant to leave Roberts' side.

"Good to see you haven't lost your way with women," Merlyn noted.

"As you say, Ma'am," Roberts agreed.

"Come! Sit!" Ferretti snapped, indicating a stone bench not far from the Stargate. He perched on the arm of the bench so that he could loom over his subordinates. "So what's the deal, Captain?"

Merlyn sat still for a long moment and Ferretti was troubled to see how rattled she appeared. He looked to Roberts and the lieutenant's body language was even more closed than usual. Ferretti suppressed a shudder at the thought of anything that could shake even these two veterans of the unnatural.

"Until fourteen days ago, this planet was a normal, happy world," Merlyn began. "There were three major powers and dozens of lesser ones; the total number of human inhabitants was almost one billion, making it one of the most populous that the program has ever located. They seem to have been at a pre-atomic level, technologically."

Ferretti nodded. "And what happened fourteen days ago?"

"People started having the dreams," Merlyn explained. "The same dreams that the crew of the _Munin_ experienced; squid-like beings moving through space. Only in this case...In _some_ of these cases, they spoke to the dreamers."

"Wait." Ferretti held up a hand. "How many people had these dreams?"

Merlyn took a deep breath. "Everyone," she replied. "But some of them had it worse than others. A day after it started, people started to discover that their neighbours were having the same dreams as they were. The next day, this phenomenon was being reported in news media across the planet. After three days it was clear that the effect was worldwide and at that point, the cults began to form."

"Cults?"

"Lots of them, Sir. Small at first, each one gathering around a demagogue. Some were led by artists, others by zealots of one sort or another, political or religious. Most of the leaders had been in some sense remarkable, even if only by virtue of being insane. Some of the cults immediately left the cities to establish communes in the countryside, others clustered in churches or occupied waste ground. The largest in this city was led by a lunatic in the city asylum; they took over the sanatorium. All of the cults were apocalyptic, believing that the end was coming and that they must prepare in some way. Some armed to fight against the evil ones, others to fight _for_ the evil ones. Some..." Merlyn's calm voice wavered fro a moment. She composed herself and continued, her intense self-possession lending an eerie tone to her already-chilling words. "Some set about destroying their loved ones before the horror could come upon them."

"My God," Ferretti breathed, and Merlyn made no objection. "Like Dr Lund and Dr Gupta?"

Merlyn nodded. "The government tried to send the police to break up the cults, but half of their officers had already succumbed to the mania; the same was true of the army. After nine days, someone started launching missiles."

"No-one actually knows _why_ ," Roberts noted. "There was no warning, no declaration; the missiles were simply fired. First one salvo, then another, then another; individual battery commanders seem to have ordered the firing of their own missiles, some at foreign powers, others at targets within their own countries."

"As near as anyone knows, the whole planet is like this now," Merlyn said. "The city is divided up among the more powerful cults. They spend most of their time killing each other, but when they catch those who are...unaffiliated, they hold them in camps and try to convert them. There are a handful of people hiding out and one or two refuges where the remains of the military and police try to protect as many as they can, but..."

"Don't say it," Ferretti pleaded.

"They need help, Colonel. Millions dead, millions more wounded, sick and starving. They don't even know what the Stargate is _for_ ; if we just showed them and left enough people to make sure the cults don't get through..."

"Aah!" Ferretti cried, holding up a finger for silence. "Ah! Ah. Roberts; how feasible is this?"

"This is a good position," Roberts said. "With our weapons, a small number of people should be able to organise the evacuation of this city at least."

"I'm bad at math, remember. Translate 'small number' into stupid colonel."

Roberts nodded once. "An engineering crew from the Gamma site could turn this garden into a fortified checkpoint. You'd want escorts for anyone going out into the city, guards for the Gate and three or four more watch-posts to make sure no-one flanked the main position. A Falcon UAV would help with defence and recon and a FEMA response unit could handle the details of the evacuation."

"We're talking about hundreds of people," Ferretti reminded them.

"Obviously, we'd need a clearing house offworld," Merlyn added, "and somewhere to send them on to, but..."

"The Arcadians would probably be able to host a processing centre," Ferretti replied. "They've got plenty of experience of refugees and there are about a dozen under-occupied worlds who owe us a favour."

"We'll do it?" Merlyn looked startled.

"Don't look at me like that," Ferretti growled. "I may _try_ to look curmudgeonly, but I'm not completely heartless."

"It's not that," Merlyn chuckled. "But do you think the General will go for it?"

Ferretti looked across at the crowd of refugee children. "He'll go for it," he promised.

*

_SGC, Earth_

Two weeks had passed since the beginning of the investigation when SG-7 received word that Dr Mathew Lund was dead.

"He just...slipped away," Group Captain Ives explained. She looked exhausted, like a woman close to the edge of endurance. "One evening he was fine and in the morning Dr Michaels found him dead."

Alexa sighed. "Poor man," she sighed.

"He tried to _kill_ you," Roberts reminded her.

Alexa shrugged. "Only because he liked me. He wanted to spare me what was coming."

"If it helps," Ives told Alexa, "he died smiling. He looked...peaceful."

"And the others?" Merlyn asked. "Captain Mollett and Dr Sterling?"

"The dreams seem to be fading," Ives assured her. "Although none of us on the Stardrive programme have been sleeping well; things have been pretty tense all over on Shayara. I think we are all glad that he won't be standing trial, however; it seems awful to say it, but I am glad that he is...at peace."

"It may well be for the best," Merlyn noted. "Many of the refugees from Source-1 were still suffering from recurring nightmares, but these faded completely once they were removed from their world. We assumed that was because the planet was still in the path of the echo but there was an alternative theory which Sergeant Pearson came up with."

Ives looked to Pearson and raised an eyebrow.

"Resonating chambers," Pearson replied. "Light and sound can be sustained almost indefinitely in a resonating chamber."

"And you believe that there was a resonating chamber on Source-1?" Ives asked.

"Several," Pearson said. "And one on Shayara."

Ives half-rose to her feet. "What? You think there is one of these resonating chambers at the Gamma Site? Where, man? Where?"

Pearson closed his eyes and raised his hand in a conciliatory gesture. "Sound can resonate in a hollow box," he explained. "Light resonates within a crystal lattice. A psychic signal would have to resonate within a mind. I figure that's what's happening when this nightmare takes root in someone's mind. _Dr Lund_ was the resonating chamber on Shayara, which means that you should find the nightmares fading now that he is gone."

"I hope so," Ives replied, "although it's not _exactly_ a cheering thought. I don't suppose that at this point I can tell my people what caused the nightmares in the first place?"

"I'm afraid not," Ferretti replied, "although I promise that we will at least let you know if and when it has been dealt with, and you can pass that much on. In the meantime, the Code Enoch on the Gamma Site will be raised; that'll ease a few tempers."

"I'm sure it will," Ives agreed. "The base crew in particular have been getting restless for their Earthside leave. I can understand it though; I know that _I've_ never been so eager to go home. All of this has..."

Group Captain Ives fell silent as one of the SFs knocked on the door and entered the briefing room. "Captain Lloyd," the man said, proffering a folded note.

"Thank you," Merlyn replied. She opened the note and read it, quickly. "With your permission, Sir, I think this needs immediate attention."

"We're just about done here," Ferretti agreed. "We'll all get back to work. I'll come by your office in half-an-hour and find out what's so important."

"Sir."

"Dismissed," Ferretti sighed, with a slightly listless air. Once the team had gone, he slumped wearily in his seat.

"Bad dreams?" Ives asked.

Ferretti shook his head. "It's this whole 'investigation' thing; I'm not used to it. Get the assignment, do the assignment, come home; that's my speed. Now I have to try and work out what to do, evaluate courses of action and make decisions and stuff. I don't much care for it, Amanda."

"Don't do yourself down, Lou," Ives replied. "You haven't succumbed to the Peter Principle just yet."

"Peter who?"

Ives chuckled. "The Peter Principle states that any person will be promoted to his own level of incompetence. Well, you haven't reached yours just yet." She heaved a great sigh.

"Takes the edge off, doesn't it?" Ferretti asked.

"Hmm?"

"It's a hell of a ride, the Stargate program. But after you lose someone on your team..." He shrugged. "It takes on a different shade; the thrill's still there, but it's a little bit darker. Like there's a shadow falling over everything." He paused a moment and chuckled. "Just listen to me, for instance: I'm starting to sound like Roberts."

Ives forced a smile. "I'm not a field officer," she admitted. "I never even got to go out and test the stuff I build before last week. Taking the _Munin_ up...That should have been a dream come true for me, Lou; it was a nightmare."

"It'll come back," Ferretti promised. "What happened is tragic, but what you're doing is still one of the most important and incredible things in the universe. It won't be the same, but you'll find the buzz again."

"Promise?"

"Promise." Ferretti smiled encouragingly. "You going back through the Gate or straight on leave?"

"Back. I need to tell the rest of my crew that they can come home and take a break before I can relax."

"Sure," Ferretti agreed. "I'll walk you down; the techs can be a little slow to fit allied officers into the schedules," he confided.

 

"So what've you got, Merlyn?" Ferretti asked as he strode into the lab.

Merlyn and Roberts looked up from the pile of books. A third figure stood between them, a young woman with too-much make-up on her pale, elfin face, rather violently hennaed hair and a plunging neckline to her red t-shirt. Ferretti harboured grave doubts regarding the suitability of Eleri Goffannon as Merlyn's research assistant, but he was assured that she was the only applicant who not only possessed all of the required languages and other skills, but also had no desire to enslave or destroy all creation.

"Lieutenant; Miss Goffannon." Ferretti studied the trio curiously. "To the casual observer," he noted, "it would appear as though the three of you were studying a glossy magazine concealed within the pages of one of the books which the USAF acquired for you at vast expense."

Roberts gave his CO a quizzical look. "Surely if we'd concealed the magazine, the casual observer wouldn't see it."

Ferretti made a big show of thinking about that for a moment. "Whatever," he concluded. "What's so important in that magazine that it's got in the way of vital research?"

"Eleri," Merlyn prompted.

"Right, Merlyn," Eleri replied, enthusiastically, pushing her hair back behind her ears in the apparent belief that it made her look serious. "Well, Colonel Ferretti, look you; Merlyn mentioned that your astronomer friend on Shayara..."

Ferretti looked at Roberts and mouthed: _My astronomer friend?_

Roberts shook his head. _Don't stop her when she's rolling_ , he advised.

"...said he needed an additional reference point to locate your signal source," Eleri went on, oblivious to her audience's distraction. "Well, I was reading the _Fortean Times_ website this morning when I came across this article."

She picked up a print-out of an with a delicately manicured hand and passed it to Ferretti. The lead article was entitled: _I Dream of Jeannie with the Dark Green Tentacles_.

"Um." Ferretti said.

"According to this, people across the world have started dreaming of Cthuloid monsters, all in the last fortnight. _Obviously_ , I didn't take it at face value – there's a lot of good stuff in the _FT_ , but it's a little uncritical – but I checked around and..." She turned the magazine so that Ferretti could see it.

"'Berkeley Researchers Find New Moon of Uranus'," Ferretti read, trying to keep the sceptical boredom out of his voice.

"No, no," Eleri said, tapping a side-column with a short, blood-red fingernail. "This one here."

Ferretti leaned close to read the smaller typeface. "'Miskatonic Maverick Claims Evidence of Worldwide Hysteria'." He checked the top of the page and saw that this report was at least in _Scientific American_.

"Right." Sensing Ferretti's flagging interest, Eleri looked to Merlyn for support. "I checked it up with the bloke at Miskatonic University," she assured him. "He's documented reports of dreams matching the basic terms of the ones the _Munin_ 's crew experienced from nineteen countries. I did a straw poll of SGC personnel and found a strong correlation; one in four described dream images similar to those recorded in the texts."

"The SGC is hardly a typical cross-section of the Earth."

"No, Colonel, but then there were these."

She passed across a bundle of other reports printed out from newspapers in several languages.

"Cults," she said, then produced _another_ pile. "Mass suicides. Panics. Disappearing ships..."

"Stop!" Ferretti begged. "Please, G...I mean, for Chr...Please, stop. Just tell me where all this is leading. I'm a simple man with no understanding of the printed word."

Eleri looked crestfallen. She looked to Merlyn again and Merlyn gave her an encouraging smile.

"People on Earth are being effected by the psychic signal," Eleri explained.

Ferretti looked confused. "Why didn't Rasputin sense this?" he asked.

"White noise," Roberts replied. "On Earth she's almost always surrounded by people; her psychic senses are almost deaf. We're also wrapped in a web of ducts and electrical cables. Apparently, you couldn't make a better psychic baffle if you tried."

"What about when she goes out?"

"She doesn't go out much," Roberts reminded Ferretti. "I think she likes living in a psychic baffle," he added.

Ferretti winced. "Right. So now..."

"She went up to the surface as soon as I'd spoken to her," Merlyn confirmed. "She called in from the gate a few minutes ago. It's official. Weak echo, but present."

"Crap."

"No, no!" Eleri butted in. "It's a good thing!"

"Tell that to the mass suicides," Ferretti drawled.

"Oh," the young woman's face fell. "Right. Sorry."

Ferretti forced himself to look less wound-up than he felt. "Just from curiosity, _why_ is it good?"

"Because your friend can find out where it's coming from now?" Eleri ventured, once more looking to Merlyn for support.

There was a long pause.

"Good point," Ferretti allowed. "Good work, Eleri." He took the intercom phone from the wall. "Control room, this is Seven-niner; I need an exit wormhole, earliest." He listened to the reply. "No. No that's too soon. Yes; roger that, control. No, not yet; I'll speak to him as soon as...Oh he is, is he? I guess I'll speak to him now, then."

Roberts quirked an eyebrow, questioningly.

Ferretti covered the mouthpiece of the phone. "Get Rasputin down here and everyone ready to ship out to the Gamma Site in forty-eight minutes," he said. "Find Pearson and get me any supporting data you can; signal strength, bearing, the works. I'll...General O'Neill!" he exclaimed, taking his hand away again. "I need an emergency embarkation warrant for the Gamma Site; things could be about to break. Wish us luck and we'll have the problem under control by lunchtime."

*

_Gamma Site_

"Chevron seven will not lock," the technician confirmed, for the third time.

Ferretti sighed. "Boy, do I ever feel the fool," he said. "All dressed up and nowhere to go."

Although the Welsh Guards on duty at the Gate would never have said so, neither could they have denied that SG-7 looked vaguely comical, all kitted-out in their Omega suits, FREDs loaded with ammunition, explosives and micronukes, standing like lemons in front of a Stargate that would not connect.

"So...No Stargate," Alexa said.

"Or it's buried, or otherwise blocked," Pearson replied. "Any which way, we can't get through to Source-2."

"I really don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved," Roberts admitted.

"Unscheduled offworld activation," the technician warned, as the Stargate thundered into life. "Incoming wormhole."

"Stand to!" RSM Davis bellowed. "Colonel! Get that nuke back behind the bulwarks!"

The Guards obeyed at once. Ferretti signalled for Pearson and Alexa to attend to the FREDs while the remainder of SG-7 took position alongside the garrison.

There was a tense paused after the Gate opened, before the technician announced: "Receiving SGC primary IDC. Automatic defences standing down." The Guards remained on alert, however, until the Gate had disgorged its traveller and shut down.

"Bloody hell!" Eleri exclaimed, craning around to look over her shoulder. "It's like being rebirthed. You could make a bloody fortune from the alternative therapy crowd when this thing goes public." She turned back to face the bulwarks. "Of course, you'd have to have fewer guns at the other end. Bore da," she added, grinning at the Guards.

RSM Davis responded to this greeting with a sing-song slew of guttural syllables, which Eleri returned in kind.

"Miss Goffannon!" Ferretti snapped. "Before you get too involved in reminiscing about the valleys with the good warrant officer..."

"Valleys?" Eleri chuckled. "That's an Anglesey accent or I don't know my arse from my elbows."

"Whatever!"

Eleri sobered. "Yes, Colonel. Sorry."

"It's alright," Ferretti assured her. "Just tell me what was so vital that you had to come through the Stargate yourself."

"Oh, nothing really," Eleri assured him.

Ferretti just stared at her.

"I mean, it turns out nothing, since you're all still here. I was worried you would have gone on to Source-2 already and we'd have to call you back, see."

"No, I don't," Ferretti replied, although he was not convinced it had been a question.

"Well I was following a hunch, right; called down to Dr Jackson's lab and had him translate the six symbol address of Source-2 into Ancient syllables."

"And?"

"Pacifica Roolah," Eleri replied.

A hush fell over the assembled group, broken when Pearson asked: "What's Pacifica Roolah?"

"What he said," Ferretti agreed.

Eleri looked crestfallen that her pronouncement had evoked so little terror. She looked once more to Merlyn, and there she was not disappointed. Merlyn's face had gone pale with terror.

"I take it that's bad?" Ferretti asked.

Merlyn nodded. "Do you remember the chant from the Deep One village on P8F-951?" she asked Roberts.

After a moment of thought, Roberts said: " _Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn._ "

"It's all Welsh to me," Ferretti muttered, drawing a glower from Eleri.

"It's actually one of the oldest languages in the world," Merlyn explained. "In fact, a language quite possibly far older than _this_ world altogether. The passage means, 'in his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming'."

Ferretti was baffled. "If he's dead, then why are we worried?"

"It is not dead that can eternal lie; and with strange æons even death may die," Eleri intoned. "According to the texts," she expanded, "Cthulhu – the most powerful member of an alien race long worshipped as gods – lies entombed in the drowned city of R'lyeh, somewhere in the Pacific."

"Source-2 isn't in the Pacific," Pearson noted.

"Turns out Atlantis isn't in the Atlantic," Roberts reminded the sergeant.

"Cthulhu is said to be dead, but also dreaming," Eleri went on, pausing only to flash Roberts a grateful smile for his support. "He waits, dead or sleeping or something we don't even have a word for, to be awakened When the Stars are Right."

Ferretti gave an impatient huff, although he could not deny that Eleri had an impressive knack for pronouncing capital letters. "So if Pacifica Roolah is the same thing as Cthulhu's roulade..."

"R'lyeh," Eleri corrected.

"...then...what?"

Merlyn sat down. " _If_ this is the Gate address to R'lyeh then it's probably good luck that we can't make a connection. Dreams of this kind are usually associated with the rise of R'lyeh and the waking of Cthulhu."

"When the stars are right?" Roberts asked.

"Balls," Pearson muttered.

"Sergeant?" Merlyn asked.

"Just a bad thought," Pearson admitted. "Mostly theoretical and...well, I might have the theory wrong."

"Shoot," Ferretti suggested.

"It's part of the theory behind the cold dialling program," Pearson explained. "Major Carter – as was – suggested that certain Gates would be blocked from dialling certain other Gates, intermittently, regularly or continuously, by stellar phenomena like ionised nebulae, black holes, pulsars; anything with a powerful enough electromagnetic or gravitational presence to disrupt a wormhole. In theory, then, some Gates would only be accessible..."

"When the Stars are Right," Eleri whispered.

Ferretti shivered. "Miss Goffannon," he said, quietly.

"Sir?"

"Find out everything you can about Cthulhu and R'lyeh. Anytime Merlyn hasn't given you anything else to do, that's your job. Understand?"

"I understand," Eleri assured him.

"Until we know more, we lock that address out of every dialling device we have and if we decide to go there, we _don't_ go from anywhere people we care about live. Sound about right?"

"Yes, Sir," Merlyn agreed. "That sounds about right."

*

_R'lyeh_

Kahda opened her eyes and sat up. She rose from her bed and walked out of the temple. "Hyrdan!" she called. "Hyrdan!"

A thin man scuttled out of the shrine. He had the largest eyes of any man she had ever met, as large as those of any of the Deep Ones who squatted, as still as statues around the edges of the plaza. His skin was the dark tan of weathered hides; it was moist and clammy and stretched smooth across his skull. His fingers were long and spindly with knobbly knuckles, like the legs of a large spider crab.

"Yes, My Lady," Hyrdan said in his fawning, gurgling voice.

"The Eye of the Abyss," she said. "It remains secure?"

"Yes, My Lady," Hyrdan burbled. "The stars come together and the Eye looks out upon ever more worlds. However, since your arrival the Eye has not once opened. This hallowed place remains inviolate."

Kahda nodded her head. "Good," she said. "But there is too little time, Hyrdan; too little time."

"There is always time," Hyrdan assured her. "Believe me, I know. I have waited here since the last rising of the Great Old One."

"So you have told me, at great length," Kahda reminded him. "But nonetheless, there is little time. We must move swiftly or those millennia will have been spent in vain, Hyrdan."

"It is only delays, My Lady," Hyrdan globbered. "A day, a year, a million years; it is all just delays. It is not dead that can eternal lie; and with strange æons even death may die."

"Yes, I know," Kahda sighed.

"But you do not understand. You think that you are important, My Lady. You believe that you _matter_."

Kahda's eyes flashed. "I am the bringer of the Chosen One," she hissed. "You will _not_ speak to me that way."

Hyrdan smiled, dryly; it was the only dry thing about him. "Of course, My Lady."

"That is better," Kahda said. "Now; once the turmoil of the quickening has died away, we must send out our agents. Our enemies are creeping up on us and we can not wait for events to catch us. We must move first and I have plans, Hyrdan."

The spindly, fish-eyed man bowed low. "Of course, My Lady," he said again.

Kahda nodded in satisfaction. "Summon the council," she said. "I will meet with them at once."

As Hyrdan shuffled away, Kahda turned and strode up a flight of steps to a high platform, overlooking the vast, smooth, circular expanse of the Great Eye. "Soon," she murmured to herself. "Very soon, now."

She felt a spasm in her abdomen and laid a hand upon her belly. Far below, she felt the mind of the Great Old One stir in its deathlike slumber and reach out in response to the stirring of the child inside her.

And the planet itself seemed to whisper: _Soon_.


End file.
